Gujarat: Dingucha files pop up at busted documents factory

AHMEDABAD: Lonely and scared, four of a family from Dingucha in Gandhinagar, who wanted to enter the US illegally, froze to death merely 10m away from the Canada-US border in January. If you assumed that the tragedy deterred people from approaching human smugglers, think again.
Police cracking down on illegal immigration rackets in the state have found documents indicating that nearly 35 people from Dingucha itself may have flown illegally to get to the US in the past few months alone.
This came to light after a team of the Special Operations Group (SOG) of the city police raided an office near Delhi Darwaza run by a New Ranip resident and his two sons.
During the search operations on Monday, the police found evidence that the accused had allegedly forged government-certified documents needed to obtain passports and visas for nearly 1,000 people who are suspected to have gone to the US illegally over four years.
The police identified the accused as Suryaprakash Koshti, 52, his sons Abhishek, 26, and Nishith, 22, residents of Sun Real Homes in New Ranip, along with their two accomplices Udayprakash Pujary, 42, a resident of Paramsukh Society in New Ranip, and Jayesh Koshti, 29, a resident of Otamba Society in Bapunagar.
Sources in the SOG said, "The accused forged documents including bank statements, balance sheets, gumasta licences, and I-T certificates with official stamps. The accused provided any document that was needed to procure visas and passports."
An SOG cop revealed, "The accused had been running the office for four years. We seized their computers and found evidence that they had provided fake documents to at least 1,000 persons, and this number could increase as we conduct further investigation."
The police officer said nearly "35 files on the computers were of people from Dingucha".
"We have also found stamps of various village panchayats, including the talati of Dingucha, from Pujary," said the officer.