According to an FIR registered with Naranpura police on Sunday, a travel agent from the Naranpura area of the city defrauded two Maninagar residents of Rs 6 lakh under the guise of providing them with Canadian work permit visas.
Nisarg Patel, 30, of Maninagar and a native of Vadnagar in Mehsana, stated in his FIR that he works as an executive for a pharmaceutical company in Bavla. In 2018, he and his wife decided to travel to Canada on work permit visas and began inquiring among their relatives. They learned about Harshil Patel, a travel agent, and met him in November of 2018.
Harshil informed Nisarg that he would charge Rs 3 lakh for the couple’s work permit visas and promised in writing on stamp paper that if he could not produce the visas, he would refund the money. Nisarg paid Rs 3 lakh to Harshil by November 23, 2018. Nisarg’s uncle Tejas Patel, 47, a Maninagar resident, had also paid Rs 3 lakh to Harshil for the visa.
According to the FIR, Harshil demanded Rs 40,000 extra from Nisarg in November 2019, claiming that the embassy had raised the payments for the work permit visa. However, neither Nisarg nor his uncle received the visas for nearly three and a half years. As a result, they approached Harshil to procure the money they had given.
Nisarg went to Harshil’s office in January after he stopped receiving calls. The office, however, was closed, and there was no information on Harshil’s location, according to the FIR. Nisarg eventually went to the police and filed a complaint against Harshil for cheating and breach of trust.
