Did 33 deportees take legal route to enter intermediate nations? Gujarat cops to probe

Even as a release by the state government on Thursday underlined that the deportees should be dealt with “sensitivity and empathy”, with arrangements made by the police department for their transport to their home towns, the 33 Gujarat natives will be asked to record detailed statements of their travel in the coming days.

Senior police officers confirmed that the Superintendents of Police of the district from where the deportees hail have been asked to begin an investigation into the “means by which” the individuals travelled abroad.

“The deportees are too scattered across the state and not part of a single modus operandi or a single group that sneaked in together. They are people who crossed over to the US from different places at times. So, even if there is a case, it will not be a common one for all. Therefore, it will be simpler if the local district police probe the matter and register separate FIRs, if the need be,” a senior Gujarat Police official said.

An officer from North Gujarat said that individual deportees will be asked to share documents on the basis of which they applied for visas to the intermediate countries.

He said, “We will record their detailed statements in the days to come… The main question for the probe is whether they used forged documents to acquire visas of the intermediate countries. While most of them have valid passports as the basic verification has already happened during deportation, the trail of documents used to reach their destination and the intermediate countries will be a subject of probe.”

The officer further said that in several cases, agents tend to facilitate forged documents to acquire visas in intermediate countries. He said, “We have come across a couple of cases where the visa acquired was for long stay in two intermediate countries as the passage to the US border is not an instant process … In these cases, the agents likely acquire forged offer letters for seeking temporary stay visas in these countries. While many of the deportees claim they went only in January, most of them had left India a few months ago and sneaked into the US only last month.”