Imagine you’re boarding a flight to the United States. Your spouse is with you – you’ve packed up your entire life in India to emigrate for a better future. 

But then the immigration authorities at the airport tell you the US visa stamp on your passport is fake. You’re detained at the airport for a month and a half, and asked for lakhs of rupees to be set free.

This is precisely what happened to Shailendra Patel, 38, and his wife Kajal. Both were conned by one Sneha Joglekar, a self-proclaimed doctor in Pune who ran an overseas recruitment agency. 

Joglekar successfully conned at least 50 people before she was arrested by the Haryana police in August. The police told Newslaundry two complaints were registered against Joglekar in Karnal, while at least 15 police complaints have been filed against her in Pune. 

While Joglekar is presently jailed in Karnal, the victims who crossed paths with her are in debt. They allegedly gave Joglekar lakhs of rupees, often mortgaging their homes to pay for the chance of moving abroad. 

“She has conned a lot of people in various states,” said Naresh Kumar, an assistant sub-inspector at Karnal Sadar police station. “It’s a big racket.” 

“She is an evil person,” Shailendra Patel said, speaking to Newslaundry over the phone from Vadodara. “I have to start my life again from scratch.”

‘I thought her genuine as she is a doctor’

Joglekar’s agency is based in Pune. It was earlier called JSE Overseas Consultants before it was renamed to Vvarunsika Overseas Private Ltd. Her children, Varun and Nishka, help run it. Though Joglekar calls herself a doctor, she’s actually a naturopathist, not a medical doctor.

The Patels first got in touch with Joglekar in October last year.

At the time, Shailendra worked as a delivery partner in Vadodara, Gujarat. Worried about his finances, he aspired to move to the US on a work visa to give his family a better life. 

“I was looking for overseas job agents to help me get a work visa for America,” he said. “I contacted a lot of them in Baroda but none of them could assure me of it. Then someone told me about a person named Sanjeev Kapoor who lives in Australia and who can get me a US work visa.”

The contact said this Kapoor ran companies at seaports in Australia, Indonesia and the US and “recruited many people there” through port visas. Cheered, Shailendra began talking to Kapoor, who used an Australian number to call and text him on WhatsApp.

“I spoke to him for nearly a month but I wasn’t satisfied at all since the conversation was on the phone and I had not seen him in person,” Shailendra explained. “To win my trust, he told me he has a partner in India and introduced me to Sneha Joglekar.”

In Kapoor’s words, Joglekar was a doctor based in Pune who ran an overseas recruitment agency. Shailendra would have multiple conversations with her through October before he met her in Vadodara, when she visited him home.

“She quoted the price of Rs 80 lakh to get a work visa for me and my wife,” Shailendra said. “I thought her to be genuine as she was a doctor and finalised the deal.” Joglekar allegedly told Shailendra he only needed to pay her after he landed in the US. This soothed him and convinced him that Joglekar and Kapoor were the real deal.

Joglekar visited the Patels’ home in November. She took their passports and other documents, and also a bearer cheque – where the payment is made to the person carrying the cheque – of Rs 80 lakh. 

Ten days later she allegedly said there was difficulty in getting a visa interview slot because of Covid restrictions. Soon after, Sanjeev Kapoor called Shailendra.

“He said he has an office at a port in Jakarta. He said his staff will get an interview slot for me and my wife at the US embassy in Jakarta,” Shailendra alleged. “I was concerned because it was a little strange. But Joglekar convinced me. She said she’d accompany us to Jakarta for the interview and put us on the flight to America.”

Shailendra agreed, predominantly because he was comforted by the fact that he only had to pay after he reached the US. 

So began what he would later describe as “the biggest mistake of  my life”.

He gave Joglekar Rs 1 lakh towards booking tickets from Mumbai to Jakarta. The flights were booked for January 30, 2022.

“My whole family came to drop us at the airport,” Shailendra recalled. Joglekar also arrived on time but then, he said, dropped a bombshell. 

“Jakarta doesn’t allow visa on arrival. One has to apply prior for an online visa,” he said. “Joglekar came to the airport without applying for a visa though she herself had arranged our online visas. At the airport, she claimed she was not aware of the rules to land in Indonesia. I got worried but was unable to do anything because my whole family was there to see us off.”

Joglekar assured the anxious Patels that she would arrive in Jakarta two days later. Shailendra said he believed her, he thought she’d made a “genuine mistake”.

The Patels landed in Jakarta. They quarantined at a hotel for seven days and then moved to another hotel through a contact of Joglekar and Kapoor. Meanwhile, Joglekar said she would not be able to join them but that Kapoor’s staff would “take care of things”.

Another contact purportedly collected the Patels’ passports, saying they were required for submission to the US embassy. 

“I told him our presence must be required at the embassy for the biometric test,” said Shailendra. “He said it’s not required because Sneha had sent him our fingerprints that I’d given to her on a piece of paper. It was my first time out of the country. I was not aware of any procedures. I took his words to be true.”

The Patels remained in their hotel. Four days later, the contact returned and triumphantly showed them their passports – there was a five-year US visa stamp on each.

“I was a little wary,” Shailendra confessed. “But Sneha told me she has the same US visa stamp on her passport and that it’s genuine.”

Detention and a debt of Rs 45 lakh

What happened next is seared in Shailendra’s memory. 

On February 10, Joglekar told Shailendra that since the visas were done, he had to pay her Rs 30 lakh to book tickets to the US. This was a partial payment for a total sum of Rs 80 lakh – Joglekar said she had lined up jobs for both Patels as computer operators at the Chicago seaport, earning $13 per hour.

The Patels had already mortgaged 1.5 acres of land to raise the amount. In Ahmedabad, Shailendra’s father handed over the money in cash to Joglekar’s associate, one Prashant Garud. Joglekar then told Shailendra she’d booked tickets on a Japanese Airlines flight to Chicago. 

Throughout this process, Kapoor and Joglekar purportedly bombarded the couple with documents, later proven to be fake. This included an “invitation letter” from “Illinois International Airport” and bookings at a Chicago hotel.

On February 14, Shailendra and Kajal went to Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. They tried to board their flight, only to be told their US visas were fake.

“We were immediately detained,” Shailendra said. “My wife was crying incessantly.”

The Patels were held at the airport. Shailendra alleged they were “not allowed to meet each other”. He said they were “taken into custody” and “questioned about the fake visas”. He telephoned Joglekar at least five times, he alleged, and she promised to come to his aid with a lawyer. Then she stopped taking his calls.

Seven days later, he claimed an airport official “demanded money for us release”. He couldn’t remember the official’s name or designation.

“They started with Rs 50 lakh,” he claimed. “I told him we’d been defrauded and didn’t have any money left. When they discovered my wife was pregnant, they became a little lenient.” 

This “leniency” meant a payment of Rs 15 lakh, he alleged. By the time they paid the amount, the Patels had allegedly been held for two months at a detention centre at the international airport. No official charges seem to have been filed. Shailendra said they were permitted to speak to his family but “Indian authorities couldn’t help him”. He could not explain further. 

Shailendra’s father finally organised Rs 15 lakh which Shailendra purportedly paid to the airport authorities in Jakarta with the assistance of a friendly Pakistani contact whom he met at Jakarta airport.

Newslaundry contacted the Indian embassy in Jakarta to ask about what the Patels went through. This report will be updated if they respond.

On April 1, Shailendra and Kajal landed in Mumbai, numb from their ordeal. Shailendra filed a police complaint on the Gujarat police website and then visited at least three police stations, including the Crime Branch headquarters in Baroda. “All of them told me they can’t help,” he claimed, “because the accused is from Pune.”

Newslaundry contacted Bharat Singh Taank, deputy superintendent of police, state cybercrime cell in Gujarat, to ask why the Patels’ complaint wasn’t registered.

Taank said the case “doesn’t even come in the category of cybercrime” which requires fraud to have taken place online. “It is a heinous crime, but not a cybercrime,” he said. “If anything has been done online, we can look into the matter. Let that person come to us, we will hear out the case, and decide on proceeding further.”

As things stand now, Shailendra is allegedly Rs 45 lakh in debt. 

First complaint in Pune: ‘We got fed up with her games’

Newslaundry spoke to other people who alleged they had been cheated by Joglekar and her associates. All the stories followed a similar pattern – a promise of a job, a theory about a “port visa”, and the loss of lakhs. 

The very first police complaint against her was filed in Pune on March 29 by Vikas and Santosh Kanojia, two brothers who were hoping to find jobs abroad and emigrate. Vikas, 42, worked as a valet in Dubai and Santosh, 38, for a logistics company in Riyadh. 

Both returned to India just before the Covid pandemic broke out in March 2020. Vikas told Newslaundry he read about Joglekar’s recruitment agency in a newspaper. (He doesn’t remember which newspaper.) In June 2020, he and his brother visited her office in Pune’s Kothrud, where their conversation with Joglekar filled them with hope.

“She made us fill out a form with basic information and told us she can get us out of the country for a job at an Australian port in 15 to 20 days,” Vikas said. “She quoted Rs 11 lakh per person, of which Rs 6 lakh needed to be paid in advance. She said she was a doctor so we considered her genuine.”

Three days later, the Kanojias transferred Rs 3 lakh into Joglekar’s Bank of Baroda account. They had given her their passports and she sent them back about three weeks after their first meeting. Both passports had Australian visas, valid for three years.

“After that, we paid her Rs 9 lakh – Rs 4.5 lakh each,” Vikas explained. “She said she had contacts with airlines and would send us on inbound Vande Bharat flights to Australia.”

So far, the brothers had paid Joglekar around Rs 12 lakh in total. Vikas had mortgaged their mother’s gold jewellery to raise Rs 6 lakh (the monthly interest was around Rs 4,500). They also took loans from relatives and wiped out their savings. 

Soon after, Joglekar “started making excuses”.

“She told us we’d be on a flight in three days and that she’d send us flight tickets,” Vikas said. “Three days later, she said the airline had put our tickets on hold because of Covid restrictions and that our flight will be scheduled. She made these excuses for 18 months.” Most of this was on the phone, he said, though they did manage to meet Joglekar “two or three times” in her office. 

Vikas said he asked Joglekar to return their money and that Joglekar purportedly agreed, but never did. “Later, she flatly refused to give back our money,” he said. “Instead, she asked for Rs 2 lakh more and said she can send us to Belgium.”

Of course, both the tickets and visas provided by Joglekar were fake. The visas were maritime visas, which do not allow for air travel. Vikas said he had asked Joglekar about this but she told them “she will fly us to Australia on a transit visa and, after reaching there, her lawyer will change the visa status”.

Finally, Santosh said, they went to the police. “We got fed up with her games,” he said. “We lodged a police complaint at Kothrud police station.” 

It took a while for the police to “take the case seriously”, he said, but the FIR was finally filed on March 29. The FIR named Joglekar and her son Varun and was registered under sections 420 (cheating), 406 (breach of trust), 506 (criminal intimidation), and 467, 468 and 471 (forgery) of the Indian Penal Code. 

Newslaundry learned that after the Kanojias, several others – 15 in total – came forward in Pune with similar complaints. Joglekar was arrested in Pune on March 30. She was sent to police remand for 10 days and was then released on bail. 

On May 2, she was arrested by the Gujarat police on similar cases of fraud. An FIR had been filed based on a complaint from one Deepti Mehta in Gujarat’s Rajpipla.

Gujarat: ‘She fooled me’

Deepti Mehta runs a recruitment company in Rajpipla. She told Newslaundry she was “duped of Rs 65 lakh”. She pointed fingers squarely at Sneha Joglekar and Sanjeev Kapoor.

Mehta said it was Kapoor who got in touch with her first in August 2021, offering to help her find jobs for her clients in Australia. “He would send messages from an Australian number on vacancies in Australia,” Mehta told Newslaundry. “I told him I cannot work with him as I don’t know him. He then told me his partner is in Pune.”

This “partner” was Joglekar. Kapoor purportedly sent Mehta YouTube links of Joglekar being introduced as a doctor and getting an award from a local politician. Mehta then met with Joglekar in Pune where she was impressed by the latter’s “sweet talk”.

In September 2021, Mehta asked Joglekar to get eight UK visas and five Canadian visas for her client. They signed an agreement, she said, and Mehta sent Joglekar 12 passports.

“As per her instructions, I transferred Rs 4.35 lakh into her bank account and also into the accounts of Prashant Garud and Sanjeev Kapoor,” Mehta said. 

Barely 20 days later, Joglekar told Mehta the visas were arranged. Mehta was “suspicious” and said she would pay the remaining amount – Rs 65 lakh – only after verifying the paperwork. 

“But she fooled me with her speeches and promised to return the money if anything went wrong,” Mehta said. “I drew up an agreement saying if anything goes wrong, she is liable for payment to my clients. She and Sanjeev convinced me to transfer Rs 65 lakh to them. Rs 58 lakh was transferred through Angadia services to Delhi and the rest she collected in person.”

Mehta then told Joglekar she would not pay anything more until her clients reached the UK. Joglekar said her clients were scheduled to fly to the UK on February 16 this year.

However, the clients were allegedly stopped at the airport where immigration authorities said their visas were fake. In the days that followed, “Sanjeev went incommunicado and Sneha started making up stories”, according to Mehta. “I asked her to return the five passports still with her but she demanded Rs 3 lakh for that. I then went to the police and they filed an FIR against her.”

She added, “I am in heavy debt. I have to return lakhs to my clients. They keep calling me. I am very stressed, I don’t know how I will arrange it.”

Joglekar was arrested by the Gujarat police on May 2. In August, the Haryana police took custody of her after two police complaints were registered in Karnal. Joglekar had allegedly defrauded the complainants of Rs 50 lakh in total. 

Naresh Kumar, assistant sub-inspector at Karnal Sadar, said the police still haven’t tracked down Sanjeev Kapoor.

“As of now it seems there is no such person,” he said. “It’s possible she created this identity. However, we are investigating. She also used the name of her staff member Prashant Garud. She opened a bank account in his name which was used for transactions. Garud seems to be a poor chap and doesn’t have an active role in this matter.”