Illegal immigration racket: 14 Gujarat travel agents booked

The Gujarat Police lodged a first information report against 14 so-called immigration agents for allegedly luring people to pay hefty sums for illegally migrating to the US with the promise of jobs, and may have even zeroed in on the mastermind of the scam, said a senior police official involved in the investigation.

The grounding of the Dubai-Nicaragua Legend Airways Airbus A340 carrying 303 Indians  in Vatry in France on December 21 blew the lid off a thriving racket involving private firms and touts that help people reach the US and Canada via stops in Europe and South American countries. 

To make the multi-hop journey, now known as the “donkey route”, the consultancies help create fake documents and paper trails.

The FIR  filed by the Gujarat Police’s crime investigation department in Gandhinagar was based on the interrogation of 66 people on that flight.

The Airbus jet was allowed to return with the Indian passengers in the last week of December after French authorities questioned them for four days.

Of the 303 originally on board, 276 returned, with the rest having sought asylum in France and two detained over what French police said was a human trafficking investigation.

The statements of the passengers later underlined the sweeping and systematic functioning of the illegal operation. 

The 66 passengers from Gujarat, who were questioned as part of the FIR, hailed from different parts of the state including Mehsana, Anand and Ahmedabad. Some of the Gujarati passengers even hailed from Mumbai.