New Delhi: Further unravelling the web of agents behind illegal immigration of Indian youths to the United States through ‘donkey’ routes, the National Investigation Agency arrested two immigration agents 7 August.
The arrested were identified as Ravi Kumar and Gopal Singh, both from Haryana’s Karnal, and they were taken into custody in the Yamunangar and Gurdaspur districts of Punjab, an agency spokesman said.
The latest arrests are part of a probe into the allegations of one Shubham Saini from Ambala, who was deported back to India after detention by the United States Border Patrol, and come just over a month after the agency arrested two suspects on the complaint of another deportee from the US.
The NIA, probing the web e the case of human trafficking, has taken over the cases lodged by police in Punjab and Haryana on the complaints of deportees from the US.
Additionally, the Enforcement Directorate has also launched a parallel money laundering investigation to probe the flow of funds among agents, their counterparts in foreign countries and the candidates who opt for the ‘donkey’ routes. (The ‘donkey’ route refers to an illegal path that immigrants take to enter countries like the US without proper documentation.)
The Karnal connection
This particular case was registered in February on a complaint by Shubham Saini, who had accused a Yamunanagar-based agent, Jai Kumar, of duping him of Rs 42 lakh on the pretext of sending him to the US.
A resident of Ambala’s Naraingarh area, who had studied only up to class 10, Saini said that one acquaintance introduced him to Jai Kumar, who ran a visa agent business in Kurukshetra.
He had spoken to him over WhatsApp in August 2024 and was informed about the cost of Rs 42 lakh for sending him to the US through the ‘donkey’ route. This is the basis of his FIR.
After Saini agreed to pay, Jai Kumar came to his house and took his passport along with Rs 2 lakh before taking him to Delhi in September. The following day, Jai Kumar sent him to Mumbai, providing a contact number of his aide, who took him to a hotel where around 15 people were already present.
Later, all of them were sent to Guyana from Mumbai in September, and Jai Kumar’s accomplices received them there and arranged for their stay in Guyana for nearly 25 days, Saini said in his complaint. He alleged he was given no food and water, and was harassed and threatened when he wanted to call his parents. Meanwhile, Jai Kumar allegedly took another Rs 39.5 lakh from his parents.
From Guyana, Saini alleged that all the immigrants were sent to Brazil, where they spent another 25 days.
The ‘donkey’ route continued from Brazil to Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Panama, where Saini was allegedly taken to a house by Jai Kumar’s accomplice and tortured. Next, he was sent to Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and finally to Mexico before being pushed along with the others to the United States on 24 January this year.
But shortly after entering the US, he was arrested by the authorities and sent back to India.
The probe by the NIA revealed that both Ravi and Gopal, arrested on Thursday, were working in the syndicate of Jai Kumar. Both from Karnal, they allegedly managed hotel bookings and planned travel itineraries of those using the ‘donkey’ route.
Similarly, the probe by the ED zeroed in on one agent from Karnal. From a travel agency office run by an agent using the pseudonym Rocky, the ED recovered 30 passports and also accounts of books suggesting yearly transactions of Rs 20 crore over the last few years. From the same premise, the agency had also recovered stamps of Nicaragua and other countries used for communication for the movement of immigrants before their entry to the US.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)
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