Chandigarh: An immigration consultant who duped 27 people of Rs 35 lakh on the pretext of sending them abroad on work visas has been arrested by Chandigarh police along with his three employees and two bouncers. The complainant Ganeshmal, a resident of Nagaur district of Rajasthan, had alleged that he came across an advertisement of a Sector 22-based global consultant on Facebook. He called on the given phone number and the suspects told him that they send people to Azerbaijan on work visas. The complainant, along with his son-in-law, went to the consultant’s office in Chandigarh where they were met by three women employees and two men who worked as bodyguards.
The suspects told the complainant that they charge Rs 1.35 lakh for sending a person to Azerbaijan and the money has to be paid in two installments. The complainant and 26 other people from Rajasthan, who were acquainted with him in some way, had applied for work visas through the same consultant. The victims were sent visas and tickets through courier at their respective addresses, police said. Upon reaching the Delhi airport, the victims found that the tickets given to them were fake. The complainant called the consultant’s phone number, which was found switched off. The police registered a case following the complaint and during the investigation, arrested six people, including Sanjeev Kumar (43), a resident of Sector 46 and the mastermind who ran the immigration company. Investigation revealed that Sanjeev had advised his employees not to reveal their real names to the clients. After duping several people, he had opened another consultancy office named Dream Land Immigration in Sector 34.