Lucknow, November 21: Special Task Force sleuths in Uttar Pradesh have arrested two people involved in issuing fake visas, days after a suspected Pakistani spy was taken into custody in New Delhi with an Indian passport.
Acting on a tip off, STF team arrested two persons Mohd Hasan Abbas of Azamgarh and Maksood Alim of Jaunpur from Naka Police station area yesterday with 19 passports and other documents through which they used to prepare visas for sending people abroad illegally. Ali was arrested last Saturday from Delhi airport.
The UP Anti Terrorist Squad team probing issuance of passport to Ali from here, had said that it had detected gross procedural anomalies both in the Regional Passport office and Local Intelligence Unit. Abbas and Alim are part of the bigger racket in which the names of several people working in Mumbai, Azamgarh, Jagdishpur, Deoria, Allahabad, Jaunpur, Gorakhpur, Lucknow and Basti have came to light, police said.
Both the arrested persons told STF they used to collect passport from people for arranging visas through some travel agency in Mumbai and in turn used to charge Rs 60,000 from each. Some times they used to arrange one or two genuine visas from travel agencies to win over the trust of their client otherwise they used to provide fake visas, they said.
-PTI