Police in Bengaluru have initiated a probe on Wednesday against three travel agents in the city after the UK government uncovered a large scale visa fraud.
According to police, 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 were caught.
"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.
Previously on Monday in a separate incident Hyderabad police arrested seven persons for allegedly misleading and cheating unemployed youths by sending them to UAE and other Gulf countries on tampered visas.