CHENNAI: Three years after she flew to India to meet the man of her dreams after a whirlwind internet romance, Jacinta Mueni from Kenya landed herself in the immigration net. When immigration officials were checking her papers at the Chennai airport at 3.30 am on Monday, they found that her ‘visa’ was a fake set of documents printed from a government website.
The 26-year-old computer diploma holder had married Arif Khan (34) in 2011 after which the couple settled in Hyderabad, till Mueni needed to return to Nairobi for a family emergency. Unfortunately for her, the travel visa that she had used to enter India had long expired and some enquiries by Khan, a handicraft dealer in the old city, had painted grim pictures of deportation or worse. “They had been led to believe that she would not be able to enter India again, so they approached an agent in Hyderabad and paid him a hefty sum for a fake visa from the Kenyan government,” explained a police official.
Once she had the fake papers in hand, Mueni and Khan had procured a ticket to Nairobi from Chennai via Doha, leaving on Monday. Everything worked fine till she went for checks before boarding Qatar Airways flight QR 528 after her husband and his friend saw her off.
“As soon as the immigration officer saw her visa he knew that it was fake and quickly stopped her. At first she feigned innocence, but when they asked security to bring her husband and friend in for questioning, the whole story came out,” he added.
Both husband and wife were asked to spill the beans on where they got the fake documents done.
The Kenyan embassy has been notified of the fraud and the husband and wife were placed under arrest and remanded to custody late Monday afternoon.
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