A man based in Gujarat has filed a police complaint against a visa consultancy firm in Ahmedabad alleging that the company duped him of Rs 1.20 lakh on the pretext of getting an Australian work visa for his daughter and a Canadian permanent visa for him, his wife and son.
Nitin Pandya, 54, a resident of Rajkot, said in his complaint before Navrangpura Police that the visa consultancy firm named Perfect Consultancy Private Limited had advertised in a newspaper in June this year regarding visas for Australia and Canada, the Times of India reported.
When he approached the company’s Ahmedabad-based office in Emerald Building near Swastik crossroads, he met a person named Nishant Singh, who identified himself as the owner of the visa consultancy firm. Pandya told Singh that he is seeking a permanent visa of Canada for himself, his wife and son to settle down there and an employment visa of Australia for his daughter, who wanted to work in that country, the report added.
Singh took Rs 1.20 lakh from Pandya in installments in the name of providing him the visas, which never materialized. In September, when the family found Singh unavailable, they reached the office, only to find it closed. They then approached the police to lodge a formal complaint.
It was also found that the accused had duped others of Rs 15 lakh on the pretext of providing visas, the publication said.
Visa consultancy firms have been luring people with false promises of visas all over the country. Another case of visa fraud was lodged in Ahmedabad in September, where accused Jayesh Panchal was reported to have migrated to the United States after duping at least 20 people of Rs 2 crore on the pretext of getting them U.S. visa. Panchal used to run a visa consultancy on New CG Road in Ahmedabad.
Last month, an Indian national Kanwar Sarabjit Singh pleaded guilty of falsely representing him as an employee of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Facebook and WhatsApp to take money from people in the name of providing them visas for the United States.