A 35-year-old man was arrested in Greater Noida’s Bisrakh on Monday for allegedly defrauding people by offering fake “work visas” for European nations, police said, adding that efforts are underway to nab his accomplice who remains at large.
According to police, the matter came to light Saturday after Mohammad Anees, 37, a resident of Nandgram in Ghaziabad, filed a complaint at Bisrakh police station alleging that he and 27 others were duped on the pretext of securing jobs and work visas to Poland, Finland, and Russia.
Officials said that based on the complaint, a case was registered against Saksham Sharma alias Bittu and Rajiv Sharma, both residents of Karnal, Haryana, under sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita related to cheating and forgery.
“With the help of electronic surveillance, we zeroed in on suspect Saksham Sharma aka Bittu on Monday and arrested him from ATS Road in Bisrakh,” said Pawan Kumar, assistant commissioner of police, Central Noida.
The suspects operated an office in a Sector 4 mall in Greater Noida to target victims, ACP said. They ran a social media page luring people with job opportunities in European countries and work visas, later contacting potential victims manually after obtaining their contact details, according to Kumar.
“It was revealed that the suspect used to collect passports of victims to provide work visas by charging between ₹80,000 and ₹1 lakh. After receiving visas on WhatsApp, victims would approach embassies and airports only to discover they had been defrauded,” said ACP Kumar.
In Anees’s case, the suspects provided fake visas to several individuals. When someone in their group suspected the documents were fraudulent, they cross-verified with the embassy and confirmed the visas were fake, leading to the police complaint, according to officials.
Police said the suspects had been operating in Bisrakh for the past four to five months. Efforts are underway to nab accomplice Rajiv Sharma and ascertain the total amount defrauded.
Police recovered eight passports, 24 fake visas, three mobile phones, ₹47,000 in cash, and other documents from their possession. Further investigation is underway.