Mumbai airport sees decline in bogus passport, visa cases

Mumbai airport is witnessing a decline in the number of bogus passport and visa cases, thanks to modern technology, immigration work pattern, passenger profiling and action on the part of the police.

Immigration department sources said that earlier, they used to see 200 to 300 such cases every year whereas now, the number was down to 34.

According to immigration department data (to which The Asian Age has access), in 2015, there were as many as 113 cases of fake passports and visas. A highly-placed source said that seven to 10 years ago, they used to see almost 500 such cases.

While the number of such cases is still not zero, officials are no longer treating it as security threat. Sources said that in all cases, agencies realised that the accused were migrating for work only. Going by previous years, people were using fake passports and visas to go to either the Gulf or European countries. There was a trend of migrating to the United States and Canada as well.

“On the Canada and United States sector, we noticed that passengers who tried to use fake visas or passports are mostly from Gujarat. Similarly, those who used these tricks to go to Gulf countries are mostly from, Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. In a third trend, we found that those who tried to go to European countries were from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi,” the sources said.

They added that most of the accused had job opportunities in mind and some were unknowingly fooled by agents.

Not only has the number of cases declined over the years, detection rate too has risen with the Sahar police station making several efforts to nab the accused and break their nexus.

“Sahar police teams visited Kolkata, Bangalore and Uttar Pradesh to catch the bogus visa and passport agents. The agents then fled from Mumbai airport to other airports, which caused the number of such cases to drop here,” said an immigration department official.