Police said the arrested were all middlemen, and the actual racket was in Delhi, were all the documents were made, except for the yellow fever certificates, which were made and printed in Bharuch.

A police team will now be sent to Delhi to follow up the investigations, said Bharuch Superintendent of Police (SP) S M Khatri.

He said the Bharuch Special Operations Group (SOG) were responsible for sniffing out the fraudulent scheme and arresting Imtiaz alias Babu Bavla, the kingpin, and his associates Aziz, Imran along with the printer, Sohail. The four are now in police remand till January 4.

“The SOG managed to intercept two of the accused while they were making a delivery in Bharuch. We recovered several ‘visas’ and other documents. The kingpin was arrested on the basis of information gleaned from the two,” said Khatri.

He said the visas were perfect in all aspects, which meant there could be high-level connections. The case was now being examined from every aspect to determine how wide spread the scam was, he said.

SOG police sub-inspector, M I Pathan, said “Imtiaz, who owns and runs a travel agency in Palej was the main link between the racketeers in Delhi and Bharuch. “He took money and initiated his counterparts in Delhi who managed to process the visas without any hitches, charging anything between Rs 20000 and Rs 50000,” said Pathan, adding that most of the visas were for Mozambique and its neighbouring countries.

Pathan said the racket functioned so efficiently that once the initial processing was done, customers did not even need to sign any documents or submit any as proof. Customers only required a valid passport and some photographs to get the process rolling.