A Sri Lanka national has been arrested from Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport for traveling on a forged Schengen visa, police said on Saturday.
Kirupakaran Muthulingam, who hails from Colombo, arrived in the city late on Thursday evening and was scheduled to board a connecting Air France flight to Paris on Friday morning.
“He was stopped after an immigration officer at Terminal 3’s departure wing suspected that the Schengen visa on his passport’s page number 13 to be fake,” a senior police official said.It was later confirmed by Air France’s document advisor that the visa was forged.
On being questioned, Muthulingam confessed that a Colombo-based travel agent had arranged the visa for Rs 2 lakh.“He was apprehended and later handed over to the IGI Airport police station on Friday morning for cheating the Indian immigration.
“Muthulingam claims that a man named Ramesh, who works with JPN Travels, had provided him the visa in Colombo,” the official added.A Schengen visa holder can travel freely within the Schengen Territory, which includes 25 European countries.A case of cheating, forgery, using forged document and criminal conspiracy has been lodged.The Sri Lankan embassy at Chanakyapuri has also been informed about Muthulingam’s arrest and provided with details to investigate if Ramesh or JPN Travels indulge in a racket of providing fake passports and visas.
