Sixty foreign nationals were detained and face deportation after police searches in Greater Noida found them staying in the country without valid travel documents, officials said.
Almost all of those held are from eight African countries, including Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Ivory Coast and Angola, police said. Twenty-eight of them are women.
"Sixty foreigners staying in Greater Noida on invalid or forged documents and those suspected to have links with drug trafficking were detained today," Gautam Buddh Nagar Senior Superintendent of Police Vaibhav Krishna told PTI.
Forty-three of them could not produce any travel document. Seventeen others had an expired or forged visa, he said.
Many of the 60 will deported to their home countries, he said. Their embassies have been informed.
The SSP said the searches began at 5 am under the 10th edition of 'Operation Clean', a special initiative of the district police, and continued till 8 am.
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"One of those detained is from the Philippines while others are from countries in Africa. One of the detainees was found staying on a fake passport," Krishna said.
Three teams of personnel from the police and the Local Investigation Unit (LIU) carried out inspections at four housing societies in Greater Noida's Pi 1, Beta 2 and Dadri areas.
"Visas and passports of around 320 foreign nationals were checked. The documents of 60 foreigners appeared invalid or suspicious and some of them declined to show the documents, a police spokesperson said.
These 60 have been detained for questioning," the spokesperson said.
During the inspection, 222 bottles of beer marked for sale in Delhi, 3.5 kg cannabis, six laptops and 114 Airtel sim cards were seized.
Earlier, on May 12, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) had recovered 1,800 kg pseudoephedrine, the biggest such seizure in the country, from a house in Greater Noida.
A Nigerian man and a woman had taken the house on rent without facing any police verification.