Thirty-year-old Balwinder Singh and his 24-four-year-old friend Gurnaam Singh, both residents of Kurukshetra in Haryana, were held at the NSC Bose International airport after they returned to India.

In August 2007, the duo had flown to Kuala Lumpur after paying Rs 3.5 lakh each to an agent.

In Kuala Lumpur they met another agent Bakshish Chand and paid him $2,000 each for Australian visas.

“They returned to Kurushetra and went back to Kuala Lumpur in Januray 2008 to collect their Australian visas,” said an immigration official.

They later learnt that the Australian visas, Chand gave them were forged.

The duo tried to contact Chand, but he was absconding by then.

Left alone in an alien land without money, they somehow gathered enough money to return to India but the forged visas on their passports alarmed them.

Balwinder pasted together two pages of his passport to conceal the Australian visa, while Gurnaam marked a fake Malaysian government stamp on his visa.

Both arrived at the Kolkata international airport by Air India Express flight IX 921 from Bangkok at about 1.30 pm.

After an immigration official noticed that Balwinder’s passport had been tampered with, both the friends were questioned.

The two broke down and confessed to having tampered with the passports. They claimed that they were not aware that Chand would give them a forged visa.