Gandhinagar: A 22-year-old man sits impatiently at a tea stall in Dingucha village just 45 kilometers from Ahmedabad. He’s waiting to hear back from his travel agent who has promised him a 6-7 band IELTS score and a tourist visa to Canada. The recent police crackdown on agents illegally funneling youth to the United States, United Kingdom and Canada does not matter to him. His desperation to leave Dingucha village, and India, outweighs the risk.
Dingucha, along with adjoining villages like Nardipur, Manasa, Mokhasan, Isand and Nandri in Kalol taluka of Gujarat’s Gandhinagar, is a thriving hub of travel agents who promise visas with minimal paperwork at a starting price of Rs 60 lakh.
The agents have been illegally funnelling young people from these Gujarati villages with near impunity for decades—until now when their clients started coming back in body bags, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police arrived in March to find out what was happening. Two officers from Canada visited Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad to inquire into the state’s alleged local human smuggling network.
It’s a well-established web of forgers and fraudsters.
The authorities first woke up to Kalol’s illegal immigration problem in January 2022, when Jagdish and Vaishali Patel from Dingucha village and their two children —an 11-year-old daughter and three-year-old son—were found frozen to death at the US-Canada border. It once again made headlines three months ago when a man from another Kalol village died while attempting to scale the Trump wall along the US-Mexico border.
But the threat of further crackdowns has not deterred local agents and touts. In Dingucha, the walls around the marketplace are plastered with giant painted posters of travel agents promising quick migration to the US, UK and Canada. ‘No IELTS required, any education qualification,’ screams one poster with the number of the agent in extra-large font size.
At a short distance away, a group of senior citizens discuss how all the young men in the village who had land or the means to cough up the money have already left India or are in the process of leaving.
Police officials ThePrint spoke to say that in a lot of cases the illegal movement is caught only when something untoward happens to people making the journey.
“We are in the process of writing to the state government to create a formal registration of all the agents working in the state. These agents don’t have books or registers leading to incidence of such cases of human trafficking,” says Chaitanya Mandli, the Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP), crime branch of Gujarat Police.
The way Kalol’s Patel allegedly ran his business has given the crime branch a glimpse into how these alleged touts work.
Also read: Illegal Indian immigrants in US ‘significant economic contributors’, says report
Police crackdown
It took the police almost 10 months to arrest the local agent who had allegedly sent the Patels to Canada. Bharat alias Bobby Patel, who had been running his agency for many years, owned about 25 passports in his name and ran a gambling dens in Ahmedabad, says a senior police official with the crime branch.
Another state monitoring cell officer claimed that Bobby Patel was caught with 98 passports. All were dated for use in a two-month time period.
“Bobby had been active for the last eight years. Even if he worked for 6 months every year, can you imagine the sheer number of people he must have smuggled?” says the officer, who did not want to be named.
He was booked under various sections of the Indian Penal Code dealing with attempt to murder, punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder, attempt to culpable homicide and criminal conspiracy. But he was released on bail in January this year, barely three weeks after his arrest.
According to Gujarat Police, the current modus operandi of trafficking has four tiers comprising agents with specialised skill sets. The first level agent identifies residents in the community who wish to travel abroad. Every village in Kalol has its own agent and people from nearby villages flock to these agents seeking help. Called ‘Kabootarbaaz’, these agents are the first point of contact. Usually, these are people from within the community itself.
The second agent, with more specialised knowledge, will then decide what additional documents are required and what kind of visa would be apt for the person’s travel.
Sometimes documents like bank statements, residence proof and birth certificates are forged to make them eligible, a Gujarat Police officer says. At the very top are the agents who have the connections to procure forged documents and fake IELTS scores.
Money is routed through accounts in local banks.
“We usually get at least two such cases a month where a student– who evidently cannot speak in English or doesn’t have great scores– manages to get an admission into a vocational course in the US. They come to deposit their fees via the bank’s foreign exchange department,” says an employee of a public sector bank in Kalol.
It’s all legal. A month or two later, a family member returns to withdraw the refunded amount sent back by the college. The student had cancelled his admission. “But they never come back,” the bank employee added.
Out of jurisdiction
Shikha Patel*, a 42-year-old resident in New Jersey, says it took her years to find her way into the US without legal documentation. She first took a flight and then a boat to Mexico in 2003, and then walked through the “jungles of Mexico” to reach the US border. It took her two months to reach the US from Ahmedabad.
“There are local and Indian agents that take you across. We were given strict instructions on what to say if we get caught. At that time, crossing the border was much easier than it is now,” she says. There was no Trump Wall in 2003.
But her group was caught and detained by the border police. Her son, now an adult, was born in captivity. “As he was born in the US, he immediately became a citizen. After he turned a year old, due to uncertainty, I sent him back to my family in Gujarat with a family friend who was travelling back.” But the moment she got her documents and could work in America, she called her son back.
However, such operations are riskier now. Brij Yadav (32) from Kalol died while scaling the Trump Wall along the US-Mexico border in December last year.
“Yadav was a man barely making Rs 15,000 a month back home. How could he have afforded the [agent’s] fee? We suspect there are people across the border funding these operations to get cheap labour,” says a state police official.
The Gujarat Police also found that the bank documents that Yadav had submitted to the Turkish authorities, seeking a tourist visa to Canada, were fake. Most of the illegal migration happens via Turkey. A tourist visa from India to turkey, then another visa from Turkey for Canada is obtained, after this they cross the border illegally via the sea or the land route.
“We reached out to the Turkish embassy and contacted the concerned government department there. A fake document was cleared by their department,” says a police official privy to the case.
But all these cases were taken up either after a person died or was detained at the border. The police say it’s tricky. “Not only is the victim party to the crime but it also happens on international borders. Such cases are beyond our jurisdiction and laws applicable in such cases were previously not clear.” says a crime branch officer.
Also read: Indians among six migrants found dead near Canada border
‘Worth the risk’
Consultants who have set up shop in Gota, Ahmedabad, do brisk business. They don’t want to be associated with the touts in Kalol and claim that their business is completely legal. Their unique selling point is their network of agencies in the UK and Canada who are willing to employ Indians.
One agent has put up a soft board pinned with printouts of visas of people he has sent to the UK and the US. There’s even a visa copy of a six-month-old toddler. It’s the best form of advertising.
In his office, the agent sits with a family who has come from a nearby village. Outside, a young student in his early 20s waits his turn. With a 5 and above CGPA from Gujarat University, the student, who has a bachelor’s degree in Computer Applications, is willing to pay Rs 35 lakh for a two-year course.
He doesn’t know which college he wants to go to or what he wants to study. But he is sure that he wants to go to the UK and never come back. He hasn’t attempted an IELTS either.
“I will easily get a work sponsorship post with the help of my agent, after I complete the course. And then eventually, I will apply for permanent citizenship,” he says confidently.
Getting a job will not be a hurdle. There are Indian-owned agencies who are willing to employ Indians, but it comes with a hefty fee, says the agent who did not want to be named.
“Most Indian students from Gujarat get hired as caretakers for sick or elderly people, and they get paid minimum wage. Earning in dollars, they would make decent money,” he says.
Not everyone can afford the fees. Back in Dingucha, 22-year-old Vaibhav, who refused to share his full name, cannot afford to leave India. “It is only for those with farmlands,” he says glumly.
“My family won’t survive a debt of Rs 65 lakh.” Vaibhav works with a local pharmaceutical company.
“People like me will have to make peace with the fact that we will earn salaries of Rs 20-30,000 in our lifetime. There is nothing else to do here,” he says.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)