Punjab and Haryana High Court calls for tighter controls on deceitful visa agents exploiting youth’s dreams of better life abroad

Tribune News Service

Saurabh Malik

Chandigarh, May 24

The Punjab and Haryana High Court has called for stronger regulatory mechanisms to monitor and curb the activities of deceitful visa agents after making it clear that they are not only playing with the lives of the victims, working against the society’s development, but also making a mockery of “simple public aspirations”. The call came as Justice Anoop Chitkara of the high court attributed visa frauds – among other things – to youth’s desperation for overseas opportunities.

Delving into the root causes of prevalent visa frauds, Justice Chitkara asserted a desperate mindset, fuelled by the visualisation of the unseen, was leading individuals to impulsively grab the extended hand of anyone offering assistance. Deceitful visa agents capitalised on the optimistic hopes of these ill-informed and desperately desirous people, exploiting their aspirations and extorting money under false assurances.

Justice Chitkara also made it clear that the victim-complainant knew from the very beginning that they were paying to get a visa through illegal means. But one could not disregard “what was happening in the system”.

Elaborating, Justice Chitkara asserted all eyes were dreaming of a “better, brighter, and more beautiful future” in the wired and connected globe, when access to almost every facility and every commodity was a click away, and the world was a global village.

Justice Chitkara asserted: “To actualise this dream of climbing up the social ladder and securing a more comfortable and prosperous lifestyle, people and especially based on ground realities, youth of Punjab, aim at crossing borders in hopes to find and explore untapped opportunities, that they believe are just waiting for them”.

Justice Chitkara added the vision of finding greener pastures in an otherwise unseen land, based on the inspiring success stories of friends, relatives, and peers, many times led to a desperate mindset that impulsively wanted to grab any hands that extended to move them abroad. The visa thugs took advantage of such optimistic hopes, “entrapping people’s trust and aspirations in the palm of their hands, extorting money under false assurances”.

The assertions came as Justice Chitkara dismissed the anticipatory bail plea of an accused in a cheating case registered at a police station in Ludhiana after observing that the allegations pertained to cheating the complainant on assuring visa. “Considering the severe nature of the allegations and the amount involved, the petitioner fails to make a case for bail,” the Bench concluded.

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