NEW DELHI: Three years ago, on January 19, 2022, a Gujarati family – 39-year-old Jagdish Patel, wife Vaishali (35), daughter (11) and son (3) – froze to death on the US-Canada border in Manitoba while trying to illegally cross over to the US. The traffickers had left the family in the middle of a snowstorm at -37 degrees Celsius.
Three years later, a money laundering probe by the ED against the agents involved in the Patel family case has found an international syndicate of human traffickers that includes at least 260 colleges in Canada that issued student visas to “illegal migrants” to take the Canadian route to the US.
Probe on over transactions of Canadian colleges and how much money they made from ‘illegals’
Those who found the student visa route more convenient, compared to the ‘donkey route’, paid around Rs 50-60 lakh each to the agents to arrange their student visa and travel to Canada before being “pushed” into the US. The probe is still under progress on the transactions of the Canadian colleges and how much money they made from such “illegal migrants”.
“Investigations reveal that to send Indians to the US illegally, the agents arranged their admission in colleges/universities in Canada and sent them on student visas. Once in Canada, instead of joining the college, they illegally crossed the US-Canada border,” ED said.
Also read: ED probes Canadian colleges for alleged involvement in trafficking Indians to US
On December 10 and 19, ED carried out searches at eight premises across Mumbai, Nagpur, Gandhinagar and Vadodara on several agents who were involved in sending illegal migrants through these Canadian colleges.
“During searches, it was found that around 35,000 illegal migrants are sent abroad every year by just two agents, based in Mumbai and Nagpur,” ED said on Wednesday. The probe also found that around 1,700 agents/partners in Gujarat and around 3,500 across India were involved in this racket. ED estimates that more than 800 agents are still active despite a multi-agency crackdown on them.
The agency said its probe found that at least two such agents based in Mumbai and Nagpur have signed agreements with several universities and colleges abroad for admission of students on commission basis. All potential illegal migrants are then prepared with required documentation for a student visa.
During the searches, ED seized Rs 19 lakh in bank accounts of the accused besides seizure of documents and digital devices. The money laundering case is based on an FIR registered by Ahmedabad police against accused Bhavesh Patel, an agent involved in arranging the travel of Jagdish Patel (of Dingucha village) and his family in 2022.