Mumbai, Nov 13 (IANS) A woman has been booked by the Mumbai Police after the US consulate found the passport she had submitted along with her visa application was fake and she was not married to the man who was posing as her husband.
A police official involved in the investigations told IANS Tuesday that this could only be the tip of an iceberg.
"We are now investigating this whole racket which involves agents in Mumbai and Gujarat who resort to forged documents and fake marriages to secure US visas," he said, requesting anonymity.
The facts of the case have made the police and consulate officials sit up and take serious note.
On Nov 2, Tina Dashrath Patel, 24, a resident of Surat in south Gujarat, who posed as Asma Shahid Tai, wife of one Shahid Tai, 22, was called for a visa interview at the consulate.
During the interview of the couple, consulate officials found something strange about Tina. "She did not appear to be a Muslim or even married to Shahid Tai," the police official said.
The duo was taken to a separate cabin and then subjected to intensive grilling by the officials. The couple then spilled the beans.
Tina broke down and said that she was not married to Shahid, who holds a genuine passport and US visa. She was put in touch with him through an agent who promised her easy sailing through the visa interview since her "husband" already had a valid US visa.
More was in store. Tina's passport itself was found to be a fake, as also the marriage documents.
Police said the passport belonged to one Viral Bhikhabhai Patel, a management student from Ahmedabad, who had reported it as lost a few months ago. Following the police complaint, he was issued a duplicate passport by the Ahmedabad regional passport office.
That passport fell into the hands of some unscrupulous agents who came in touch with Tina, a woman desperate to go to the Big Apple.
The passport jacket was replaced with another, the photograph was removed and replaced by Tina's picture, and relevant changes were made in the remaining pages, giving her the new identity of Asma Shahid Tai, 'wife' of the Mumbai youth, police said.
She applied for the US visa under the new identity, but her luck ran out at the last minute.
The US Consulate's assistant regional security officer Coryan Krishnan lodged a complaint with the nearby Gamdevi Police Station, which arrested Tina.
She has been in police custody since and the matter will come up before a court Wednesday.
When contacted, Lynne B. Gadkowski, acting spokesperson for the US Consulate here, said: "The US Consulate takes (such) frauds seriously," although it was not in a position to release any statistical data of similar instances.
Gadkowski pointed out that the US laws require consular officers to interview visa applicants to verify their qualifications. "If during the course of the interview it comes to light that an applicant is using a fake identity or perpetuating some other fraud, the consular officer will take the appropriate steps. Stopping fraud is in the interests of both our countries," she added.
