The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has booked six persons to expose a French visa fraud flourishing since January for providing jobs on the basis of fake letters. Two of the six persons named in the FIR, are former employees of visa section of embassy of France in Delhi and they connived with others for the visa racket which went on from January till May 6, this year, said the CBI.

The CBI carried out searches on Friday at six locations of the accused at Delhi, Patiala, Gurdaspur and Jammu and recovered incriminating documents and articles including laptop, mobile phones, suspicious passports, among others. The six accused arrested by the CBI are: Shubham Shokeen and Aarti Mandal, both were working in visa section of French embassy, and Navjot Singh, Chetan Sharma, Satwinder Singh Purewal and Manpreet Singh.

Conspiracy

According to criminal conspiracy hatched by them, “applicants from Punjab and Jammu submitted fake and forged letters purportedly written by a private company based at Bengaluru to the Consulate General of France, Bengaluru for issuing Entry Visas, for their joining private companies in Port-Le-Havre, France,” the CBI alleged.

Shoken and Mandal charged ₹50,000 per application on being approached for issuing Entry Visas in favour of three other accused. The two employees did it on their own without the knowledge and approval of the Head of Visa Department, Embassy of France, New Delhi, said the CBI. “It was also alleged that after issuance of Entry Visa, the said two officials displaced/destroyed the documents/files from the Visa Department,” the agency pointed out.

During the period of five months, several files were allegedly handled by these accused which mostly pertain to individuals i.e. young farmers or unemployed people from Punjab who had not earlier travelled. The CBI also charged that during the said period, the accused had perpetrated fraud of huge amount in visa section of the embassy.

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