When 20-year-old Maninder Pal Singh landed at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport on December 14 last year, after being deported from the USA as an illegal immigrant, authorities found pages missing from his passport. It was revealed that he had torn them out to hide the fake visa stamps that his ‘agent’ had put after leading him into the Americas via a dunki route, officers said. Two months later, on February 18, the IGI Airport police arrested one of the men, Amit Arora aka Rachit, who facilitated the crime. A week earlier, police had nabbed the agent, Mandeep Singh, who deceived Maninder and transported him to the US, from Moga. Amit, 43, is accused of arranging dunki routes for people like Maninder looking to enter the US illegally, police said. During questioning, he admitted to the police that he has transported many individuals through various routes, including through countries in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, South America and the Caribbean. According to police, a ‘dunki route’ refers to an illegal route used to enter a country by travelling through a series of countries, exploiting loopholes to obtain fake visa stamps. These routes are utilised to transport a range of people, from willing migrants to those who are trafficked against their will. Agents exploit individuals by luring them with employment opportunities, asylum, and citizenship to facilitate the movement, which could take months. This was what happened in Maninder’s case. “In 2023, he (Maninder) contacted Mandeep through one of his friends, and asked him to arrange his journey to the USA,” Usha Rangnani, Additional Commissioner of Police, IGI, said. Mandeep is from Kapurthala in Punjab, where he also had an office. Maninder paid him the money — Rs 41 lakh — there to get to the US. In October 2023, Mandeep took Maninder on an arduous 13-month-long journey via a dunki route, travelling through a series of countries including Kazakhstan and Dubai in the UAE. From Dubai, Maninder was taken to Senegal and then to Libya and Nicaragua. From Nicaragua, he entered Central America via Honduras, eventually making his way to Guatemala and finally to Mexico, police said. In November 2024, Maninder crossed into the United States through the Mexico border, police said. “The agent arranged a fake Guatemala visa and immigration stamps of arrival/departure of some countries to cover up his illegal journey. After reaching the USA, Maninder was instructed by Mandeep to remove pages from his passport that contained fake visas and stamps,” Rangnani said. The US authorities, however, detected the tampering and detained Maninder for over two months before deporting him to India, police said. After police picked up Mandeep, he revealed that another agent — Amit — was also involved in the crime, officers said. “He (Amit) has been an agent for the last few years and has a travel office in Sector 17, Chandigarh. During his work, he came in contact with Mandeep and started collaborating with him. They used to dupe people on the pretext of sending them abroad, providing visas of foreign countries at cheaper rates, and promising job opportunities there to earn quick and easy money,” Additional CP Rangnani said. Maninder, who hails from Jalandhar in Punjab, too was arrested on December 15, a day after he arrived in India under sections 318(4) (cheating), 319(2) (cheating by personation), 336(3) (forgery), 340(2) (forged documents), 238(C) (hiding evidence) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita and Section 12 of the Passport Act. Explaining the dunki routes used, police said apart from the one employed in this case, journeys across Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Europe, South America, and Caribbean islands have also become frequent.
