Chennai airport turns hub for illegal migrants to Malaysia

Chennai: When Malaysia is considering its largest-ever programme to legalise immigrants without papers, Chennai airport is seeing a steady increase of illegal migration.
The last of such incident came to light in the wee hours of Friday when the airport police arrested two men on trying to check into a flight to Malaysia using fake tickets. Chennai airport police inspector D Arockia Raveendran said the two passengers were cheated by an agent called Velmurugan in Singapore, who offered them a job there.
The men from Tiruchi and Vellore were desperately searching for a job in Malaysia. Marimuthu, who works as an electrician, and Udayakumar, a daily wage labourer, had paid Rs 10,000 to Velmurugan for the tickets. "They said Velmurugan's father collected the money and gave them print-outs of tickets sent from Malaysia. They were arrested after the airline officials found the tickets to be fake," said Raveendran.
The inspector said Chennai airport, said to be one of the safest gateways for illegal migrants in the country, has tightened immigration rules in the last two years, but such cases keep happening. "We come to know of the sad stories of labourers only when we arrest passengers for smuggling drugs and such banned materials," said a senior immigration official at Chennai airport.
18/06/11 Arun Janardhanan/Times of India

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Categories: Airports Jun 2011, Foreign Jun 2011