THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Hardly two months ago, a large group of youths, about 450 of them, assembled at the office of the Trivandrum Air Travels and Tours in the city and vandalised it.The reason for their atrocious act was that they were cheated by the tour operators who promised to provide them job visas to West Asian countries.After collecting money from each of them, the agents just vanished, alleged the youths, who hailed from different parts of the state.The visa agents duped the youths of an aggregate sum of Rs. 1.5 crore.Even though the police have arrested two persons in connection with the incident, the prime accused are still at large.The case mentioned above is just one of the numerous cases of visa frauds registered at different police stations in the city.Economic recession might have made its presence felt all over, but it has not brought down the number of aspirants seeking jobs abroad.It is to address this issue that the City Police are coming up with a new initiative, called ‘Visa Frauds Monitoring Cell.’ Through the initiative, the City Police aim to prevent visa-related frauds even before they occur.‘’The initiative is based on ‘Prevention is better than cure,’’’ says City Police Commissioner Manoj Abraham, who is behind the idea.A special team will be constituted under the cell to keep a tab on the functions of travel agents.In most cases, the fraudsters lure their prey through advertisements placed in the media, especially newspapers and posters pasted along roadsides.The officials will scan all media for such advertisements and verify their authenticity.A majority of visa fraud cases can be prevented through this kind of operation, if not completely uproot the menace, according to the Commissioner.‘’The present practice of the police is to launch a probe only after the complaint is received.But in most cases, the culprits might have reached a safe distance by the time we receive the complaints,’’ he added.The new initiative is being launched in the city as part of improving the Jana Maithri police system.The manpower for the initiative will be pooled from authorised security agencies and retired police officers, who will carry out the field operations such as secretly probing into the advertisements placed by visa agents.Their operations will be monitored by senior police officers.The Visa Frauds Monitoring Cell is expected to be launched next month.
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