DAMMAM, 27 March — Nineteen Indian workers were detained at King Fahd International Airport last Thursday when immigration officials found that their visas were forged.
The 19 workers arrived on an Air Lanka flight and are still lodged at the airport awaiting their deportation.
The authorities have asked Air Lanka to return them to their point of origin.
Air Lanka officials were not available to comment. However, an airport official said that the airline has agreed to take them back and they are scheduled to leave either on Wednesday or Thursday.
There is a racket in the cities of Bombay, Hyderabad and Trivandrum, in which recruiting agents have been duping workers by providing them with forged visas. The Indian government has introduced new regulations to help fight the practice.
However, some travel agents, apparently in connivance with local officials, continue to dupe workers, who fail to check the validity of the papers and documents they are given.
They are reported to be paying between SR5,000 to SR8,000 for the visas.
During Haj, officials detected forged visas belonging to many Egyptian pilgrims, but allowed them to perform Haj on compassionate ground. Egyptian police uncovered a scheme to sell forged visas to Saudi Arabia to would-be pilgrims, seizing money and faked documents and making one arrest.
