Hyderabad: The police has busted a foreign job racket and arrested a gang of three for the crime. Police also seized over 200 passports from them.

The accused were cheating job applicants and were recruiting Indian workers for foreign companies without permission from the protector general of emigration under the ministry of overseas Indian affairs.

The arrested men are B.V. Ratnaiah, 47, staying at Bowenpally and a native of West Godavari, Jidde Srinivas Rao, 46, a consultancy agent and a resident of Saifabad and a native of West Godavari and G. Suryanarayana, 65, the proprietor of Master Manpower Corporation. The absconding accused are M. Mutthalifu, the chairman of MM International recruiting agency, Mannady, Tamil Nadu, Tajuddin, manager of MM international consultancy and Naseer, an employee of MM International.

Task force DCP B. Limba Reddy said that Ratnaiah and Srinivas Rao recruited people for jobs in foreign countries without any license. They collect about Rs 75,000 to `1 lakh from each applicant and used to place ads in newspapers offering jobs as masons, labourers, carpenters and draftsmen.

“These agents send résumés to Manpower Consultancy in Hyderabad, TN and Mumbai after collecting passports from applicants. They get about Rs 20,000 commission per candidate. In fact no charges have to be collected to provide visa,” said Mr Limba Reddy.

The accused provide visa and air ticket to customers and when some candidates fail in interviews or medical test they don’t return the advance and passport.

The kept the passport with them illegally by making false promises to provide good job in other countries and did not return the money claiming that it was spent for processing their job visa applications and miscellaneous expenditure.