Alert immigration officers at the Sonauli border checkpoint in Uttar Pradesh have thwarted a brazen attempt by a man from Punjab to illegally cross into Nepal using a counterfeit Singaporean passport. The incident, which occurred late on Thursday, has unveiled a complex web of international deception spanning decades.
Caught in the Act at the Immigration Counter
The individual, identified as Vimal Deendsa from sector 69 of Mohali, Punjab, approached the immigration counter for clearance to enter Nepal. He presented himself as one Hrbans Singh Bal and was carrying both an Indian and a Singaporean passport. However, his plan began to crumble when an observant officer noticed irregularities in the documents.
Upon closer inspection, the Singaporean passport was found to be a sophisticated fake. The Delhi airport arrival stamp and the e-Visa on the document were both counterfeit. When confronted, Deendsa confessed to his real identity, which was later verified using an Indian Voter ID card (EPIC) recovered from his possession.
A History of Fraud and Flight Unravels
An immediate investigation by Bureau of Immigration (BoI) sleuths under the Foreigners Regional Registration Office (FRRO), Lucknow, pieced together a startling history. Official sources revealed that Deendsa's life of forgery and flight began in the early 1990s when he left India to work as a truck driver in Canada.
After being involved in multiple road accidents there in the mid-1990s, he fled back to India in the early 2000s. To evade Canadian authorities, he used a forged Indian passport under the alias Hrbans Singh Bal. His attempts to return abroad, however, did not cease.
Around 2010, he tried to enter Canada using a different fake Singaporean passport but was caught and deported by authorities in Madagascar. After marrying a legal clerk from Punjab in 2015 and becoming a parent, he managed to move his wife and child to Toronto, Canada.
The Final Failed Bid for Reunion
In a desperate bid to reunite with his family in Toronto, Deendsa hatched another elaborate plan. In October of last year, he paid USD 3,000 to a Suriname-based travel agent to obtain yet another Singaporean passport. His intended route was to fly from Kathmandu to China, then to France, and finally enter Toronto.
The agent allegedly advised him to first test the new passport's viability at the porous Indo-Nepal border. This test proved to be his ultimate downfall. The Sonauli immigration officer's sharp eye caught a fake IGI Airport arrival stamp on his Indian visa, which had no matching record in the official system.
Following a written complaint from the immigration officer, the Sonauli police have registered a case against Deendsa. He has been booked under multiple sections of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023, including cheating by personation, forgery of documents, and using a forged document as genuine, along with relevant sections of the Passport Act, 1967.
"We are verifying the details of his confession," an official source stated, confirming that the investigation into his past activities and international connections is ongoing. The case highlights the vigilance of border security forces and the sophisticated methods sometimes employed in illegal immigration attempts.
