A 36-year-old man was apprehended from south-west Delhi on Saturday by the crime branch police and two of his associates were booked for their alleged involvement in a scam in which people were told that they would be given Portuguese visas, only to receive fakes, officers said.
The police identified the apprehended individual as Manjit Singh, and his associates as Balwinder Singh and Mahinder Gandhi.
Officers said they received information that Balwinder and Manjit had taken Rs 12 lakh from four men from Punjab after promising to send them to Portugal, but had provided fake visas to them. They were traced to a hotel in Mahipalpur. Copies of the visas were seized and sent to the Portuguese embassy for verification and were confirmed to be fake, officers said. Soon, a raid was conducted at the hotel and Manjit Singh was found along with the four men Gurpreet Singh, Ravinder Singh, Satender Singh and Sukhdev Singh. The police said that the passports of the men were examined and it was found that the visas were fake.
Sukhdev Singh then filed a complaint alleging that after he had contacted Manjit, the latter had claimed that he could get a Portuguese visa for him and had demanded Rs 12 lakh. Sukhdev then allegedly paid an advance of Rs 55,000 to him. He was then told to go to Delhi on January 24, where he met Manjit’s associates Balwinder and Mahinder. They took his passport and assured him that he would receive a Portuguese visa in one to two months.
The complainant said he then returned to Punjab and transferred more money to them. He said that he had transferred Rs 8 lakh to an account in total and Rs 4 lakh in cash, but the matter got delayed until August, according to the police. Later on, Sukhdev was told that the flight would be arranged for August 25 and was told to go to the hotel to meet Manjit for instructions on how to proceed. This was when the police raided them, officers said.
An FIR was filed against the accused under IPC sections 420 (cheating/dishonestly inducing delivery of goods), 467 (forgery of security, etc) 468 (forgery for cheating) 471 (using forged document as genuine) as well as section 12 of the Passport Act.
