Three travel agents are under investigation by police here after the UK government uncovered a wide scale visa fraud.
The agents were allegedly producing fake documents and supplying counterfeit immigration stamps to support their customer's visa applications to countries including the UK.
The scam was uncovered after eight applicants applied for UK visas using passports containing 'fake' immigration stamps.
"The agents advised the applicants to get the stamps to show that they were all well travelled and to hide the fact that they had all broken the rules of their previous UK visas," a press release issued by British High Commission said.
The fake stamps in the passports were immediately found and further investigations, including sharing the information with other diplomatic missions, was carried out by the immigration enforcement team based at the Deputy High Commission, Chennai.
Due to the serious nature of the crime, rather than just refuse the visas, the immigration enforcement team retained the passports and conducted further checks, it said.
Once enough evidence was compiled, the team passed the information onto the Regional Passport Office here to investigate further.
The passport office advised of further fraud in these cases, as all eight applicants had recently applied for new passports, falsely claiming the ones retained by the immigration enforcement team had been lost, the release said.
The Regional Passport Office revoked the individual's passports and passed all details and relevant documents to the central crime branch who are now investigating the case, it said.
The Regional Passport Office here is currently working closely with the British Deputy High Commission, Chennai and local police authorities to establish the full facts of the case and take action against those found guilty.
"Further to these cases being uncovered, the immigration enforcement team have done a number of checks on the agents, conducted site visits to their businesses and further interviews with their customers. All relevant intelligence has now been passed on to the Bangalore crime branch to investigate," said Regional Passport Officer, Karthigeyan.
Samuel Darling, Regional Manager for the UK's Immigration Enforcement Risk and Liaison Overseas Network said: the UK government takes visa fraud very seriously and those who are found guilty of it are not only refused a visa, their passport could be revoked, they could face 10-year travel bans from not only the UK but from countries including America and Australia and they could also face a criminal investigation.
"We are aware of a number of travel agents across India who encourage applicants to submit fraudulent documents or passports that have been tampered with as part of their visa application and it's important that people know the consequences of being caught, before they agree.
"All visa applications are assessed on their own merits and applications must meet the immigration rules. The UK would urge applicants who don't meet our immigration rules not to apply for their visa in the first place as it is simply not worth the risk," said Samuel Darling.
