UP STF arrests two persons involved in visa racket

Special Task Force sleuths in Uttar Pradesh have arrested two people involved in issuing fake visas, days after a suspected Pakistani spy was taken into custody in New Delhi with an Indian passport.

Acting on a tip-off, the STF team arrested two persons – Mohd Hasan Abbas of Azamgarh and Maksood Alim of Jaunpur from the Naka Police station area yesterday with 19 passports and other documents, through which they used to prepare visas in order to send people abroad illegally.

Ali was arrested last Saturday from Delhi airport. The UP Anti Terrorist Squad team probing issuance of passport to Ali from here, had said that it had detected gross procedural anomalies both in the Regional Passport office and Local Intelligence Unit.

Abbas and Alim are part of the bigger racket in which the names of several people working in Mumbai, Azamgarh, Jagdishpur, Deoria, Allahabad, Jaunpur, Gorakhpur, Lucknow and Basti have come to light, police said.

Both the arrested persons told the STF that they used to collect passports from people to arrange visas through a travel agency in Mumbai, and in turn used to charge Rs60,000 from each.

Sometimes, they used to arrange one or two genuine visas from travel agencies in order to win over the trust of their client; in most cases, they used to provide fake visas, they said.

While Abbas told the police that he got involved in this racket since 2002 after returning from Dubai and Saudi Arabia, Maksood said he got involved in the racket in 2006.

The STF is getting information about the people whose names have been mentioned by both these persons as their partner, who are active in other parts of the state, police said adding that the case was registered in Naka police station.

Earlier in 2003, the STF had busted a similar racket and recovered 59 fake passports and other documents.