The duo were traveling to France via Dubai, where the authorities refused to let them board the flight to France and sent them back to Nepal for traveling on fake French visas, the DoI informed.The DoI said it is working to verify the authenticity of the visas.
"We have contacted the French embassy to confirm whether the duo had been granted the visas. We can't just say they were traveling on fake visas without getting the embassy's confirmation," director at the DoI Tek Raj Gyawali told Republica.
As per the statement given to the authorities by the duo, they had paid Rs 1 million each to an agent to get the French visas. "We don't know anything about the visa as our agents did everything on our behalf," reads the statement recorded by them at the DoI. "We just gave the agent our photos, passport and money so that we could go to France."
Their statements suggested that they were not aware of the real identity of the agent whom they had paid huge amount of money.
They are in the custody of the DoI since December 14 for further investigation. Their current passport shows that they have not travelled to any other countries.
According to Nepal's immigration law, they can be sentenced to jail for up to five years or slapped a penalty of Rs 50,000 or both.
The officials at the DoI claimed that this was the first case of Nepalis trying to use fake visa for entering into France. When asked why were the duo were cleared by the immigration to travel to Dubai, director general of the DoI Kedar Neupane said, "We are investigating the matter and trying to find out if the airport officials are involved."
Neupane further said that the machines at the Tribhuwan International Airport (TIA) can detect fake passports but not fake visas.
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