New Delhi:
Sixty foreign nationals were detained in Uttar Pradesh’s Greater Noida on Wednesday, mostly for allegedly staying in the country on invalid or forged documents, police said. Those held included people of nine nationalities, including Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Ivory Coast and Angola, the police said.
“Sixty foreigners staying in Greater Noida on invalid or forged documents and those suspected to have links with drug trafficking were detained today,” Gautam Buddh Nagar Senior Superintendent of Police Vaibhav Krishna told PTI.
He said the searches began at 5 am under the 10th edition of ‘Operation Clean’, a special initiative of the district police, and continued till 8 am.
“One of those detained is from the Philippines, while others are from countries in Africa. One of the detainees was found staying on a fake passport,” Krishna said.
Three teams comprising personnel of the police and the Local Investigation Unit (LIU) carried out inspections at four housing societies in Greater Noida’s Pi 1, Beta 2 and Dadri areas.
“Visa and passport of around 320 foreign nationals were checked. Documents of 60 foreigners appeared invalid or suspicious and some of them declined to show the documents. These 60 have been detained for questioning,” a police spokesperson said, adding that 28 of them are women.
“During inspection 222 bottles of beer marked for sale in Delhi, 3.5 kg cannabis, six laptops and 114 sim cards of Airtel were also seized,” he said.
The SSP said the LIU has informed the embassies of the detainees about the action and further proceedings are underway.
Earlier on May 12 this year, the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) had made the country’s biggest seizure of over 1,800 kg pseudoephedrine from a house in Greater Noida.
A Nigerian man and a woman, who were living in the house in sector P4, under the jurisdiction of Kasna police station, on rent did not have any verification of their identity done by the local police, the officials had said.
