HYDERABAD: Several foreign nationals, mostly from African countries who visit India to earn money illegally, are learnt to be deliberely damaging their passports so as to evade deportation once they are caught. Out of 84, as many as 42 Nigerian nationals were arrested in cyber crime cases by Rachakonda police. They either have fake passports and visas or no passports at all. Police say that depositing the fingerprints of all the foreigners during arrests and alerting the Bureau of Immigration would prevent them from fleeing back.
A senior police officer from Rachakonda recently shared that an African national was caught at New Delhi for his involvement in a cyber crime case. He had given false details about his name and nationality and the same were submitted in the court during remand. After coming out on bail, he approached the Nigerian Embassy and went back to his country. “When the accused failed to attend the court proceedings, a warrant was issued against him. The team, which when went to serve the notices to the accused had learnt that all the details he furnished were wrong. On approaching the Bureau of Immigration with the accused’s fingerprints, the team found that he was a Nigerian national and then issued a look out notice against him. However, by then he had flew back,” said the officer.
After six months, he again visited India, landed at New Delhi airport but he could not escape this time. He was arrested by the Delhi police and remanded, said the official. Many a time, African nationals are found to be visiting India only to do illegal activities. They paste the photographs on others passports and take photostats of the visa documents to produce them during arrest. They claim to be innocent in the court and blame the police of writing false information and seek bail, said the officer. Responding to a query, the officer shared, “Unless we know their identity we cannot do much not even secure conviction in the courts. Hence, we have been exploring all possible way to keep a check.”