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New Delhi, Nov. 23 Document verification of potential students and professionals seeking visas may come in for increased scrutiny, with the UK Visas Authority having identified 140 companies in India in 2006-07 engaged in the business of providing fake visa documents.

Alarmed by the number of fake visa documents submitted by individuals and companies, Mr Chris Dix, Director, Visa Services - South Asia, UK High Commission, said, “Document fraud by students and professionals is increasing. However, with the points system that would be implemented by 2008 on a full-fledged basis, the compliance norms would be much stricter.” He said that under the points system, the penalties for non-compliance may be high for individual sponsors, while companies whose employees flout norms may not be permitted to bring in foreign labour in the future.

“Currently, the number of such companies are estimated to have gone up to 200 in India ,” said Mr Yogesh Bhura, Managing Director, IntegraScreen, a Singapore-based firm involved in migrant verification.

However, the UK and the US have been facing a similar predicament on the global front as well. Last year, the UK Home Office detected 4,000 forged or counterfeit documents at the UK Port, while the US Customs and Border Protection suspected 84,000 individuals of entering the country on fraudulent documentation, revealed a joint study released by the Economist Intelligence Unit and IntegraScreen on Friday here.

The report also cited concern on the lack of standardised international procedures for document verification despite the scale of the problem. Mr Dix said the UK, on its part, has deployed dedicated staff for verification of student and professional visa applications.

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