Visa Fraud: Five Out of Eight Women from Amalapuram Freed, Three Still in Kerala Prison 

Amalapuram: Gullible women from Amalapuram district in Andhra Pradesh are falling prey to fake visa agents. Lakhs of rupees are being collected from these women with a promise of better employment opportunities in the Gulf countries and the visa agents are making them board the flights with fake visas. 

Recently one such fake visa racket came to light when the immigration staff at Kochi airport checked their passports and found that they departed from Shamshabad (RGIA) Airport carrying forged visa documents. 

Sources said Rambabu, an agent from Kunavaram in Uppalaguptam mandal, lured many innocent women from Amalapuram by offering jobs in Gulf countries. Many women from various mandals of Ambedkar Konaseema district gave him Rs 1 lakh for the immigration and passport process as he promised them a better future in the Middle eastern countries. Locals said there were some women from their district among the 30 women group that left for Hyderabad in May last year to catch a flight to the Gulf. Agent Rambabu gave them visa documents and sent them to Hyderabad. 

A man named Raju received the women in Hyderabad and put them on a Kochi-bound flight and went missing from the airport in Kerala leaving the women to fend for themselves. The immigration staff at the airport found that these 30 women were travelling on a fake visa. 
 
On the basis of the complaint from immigration officials, a case was registered and all the 30 women passengers, duped by the visa agents, hailing from various parts of the state were arrested on May 8, 2021.  

These women are languishing in Kerala for over a year now. After their families approached the women's wing of the Human Rights Welfare Association. After the intervention of HRWA vice-chairman Bhavani, five out of 30 women were released on bail. 

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The five women from Amalapuram released from Kochi jail in a fake visa case are Srilakshmi (Ravulapalem), Parvathi (Devaguptam in Allavaram mandal), Janaki (Ramachandrapuram), Mangadevi (Yanam) and Sowjanya (Eluru). We have also received information that some more women are lodged in Kerala state jail.

The relatives of imprisoned women have sought the intervention of District Collector Himanshu Shukla. As per the collector’s direction, SP Sudeer Kumar Reddy sent a police team to Kerala to secure the release of three women from the district.