With the arrest of Bharat Patel alias Bobby Patel, it has come to light that he used to take Rs 85 lakh per person for illegal border crossings. The visa agent’s arrest comes in connection with the death of a family of four from Dingucha village in Gujarat while crossing over to US from Canada.
According to police sources, Patel might have sent over 1,000 foreign immigrants to US and other countries. Officials of the State Monitoring Cell (SMC) said raids were conducted at Patel’s rented house at Supercity Glory near Bhadaj Circle, his office at SD Farm in Chandlodia on Wednesday morning.
“We recovered 94 passports of different individuals from Mehsana and Ahmedabad, foreign currency, documents for visas of European countries, laptops and other ID proofs of foreign travel aspirants,” an official said.
Meanwhile, Gujarat police said that the probe into the fake passport seizures, in which the Ahmedabad crime branch had filed a chargesheet naming Bobby Patel and Charanjit Singh as absconding accused, has been handed over to the SMC.
A senior police official said, “We have directed SMC to also conduct an informal inquiry into the Dingucha tragedy which left four of a single family frozen to death on the Canada-US border on January 19, 2022. Offences for forging visa stamps, duplicate passports and under sections of human trafficking have been registered against Patel in Kolkata, Mumbai and Delhi. Offences have also been registered in Ahmedabad crime branch and CID crime Gujarat.”
The four who died in the chilling cold on January 19 were Jagdish Patel, 35, his wife, Vaishali, 33, and their children Vihanga, 12, and Dharmik, 3.
As cases of illegal immigration, kidnapping, connivance with an agency issuing IELTS certificates, and bogus passport are registered in Mehsana. Police there and in Gandhinagar will soon seek Bobby Patel’s custody from SMC.
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