NRI Recruitment Fraud–No Wages, No Papers, No Way Home: Punjab Man’s Nightmare
NRI Recruitment Fraud: Fatehgarh Sahib man alleges recruitment agent promised him a job abroad, left him without wages or residency papers, then reneged on a settlement. FIR now registered under BNS cheating and Emigration Act provisions
North Desk Correspondent
Chandigarh, August 1
Harjinder Singh’s FIR runs to a single page of narrative, but it covers nearly two years — a job that was supposed to change his fortunes, a return home paid for out of his own pocket, and a settlement that came and went without a rupee changing hands.
This week, the Punjab police have registered his FIR under sections 316(2) and 318(4) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, and Section 24 of the Emigration Act, 1983.
The ordeal began in 2023
NRI Recruitment Fraud: According to the FIR, it began in September 2023. Harjinder, a resident of Old Sirhind in Fatehgarh Sahib, was introduced — over email and WhatsApp — to a man named Kulwinder Singh, who ran an outfit called M.S. Gulf Trade Test Center on Mandi Ahmedgarh Road. The pitch, as Harjinder describes it in his complaint, was straightforward: a job abroad, a wage of €450 (450 Euros), five working days a week, arranged through a contract.
He says he paid for that promise in two installments and two currencies of trust. ₹1.42 lakh went online, via UPI, to a Google Pay account belonging to a man identified as Nikku Singh, who Harjinder says worked out of Kulwinder’s office. Another ₹1.88 lakh changed hands in cash — no receipt, he says, was ever given. In total, his complaint puts the figure at ₹3.3 lakh, handed over on the strength of a contract and a conversation.
How NRI recruitment fraud unraveled
NRI Recruitment Fraud: What came after, according to the FIR, was a slow unravelling. The wages, he alleges, didn’t match what was promised. Food and lodging that should have come with the job didn’t materialize. And then came the detail that turns this from a wage dispute into something the Emigration Act was written for: Harjinder says his employer never furnished the residency documentation (the iqama) that would have made his presence in the country lawful.
Without it, he says, he and the men who’d gone with him were left exposed, undocumented in a foreign land by the default of the very agent who’d sent them there.
He came home first, spending ₹62,000 of his own money on the return ticket, he says, after his health gave out under the strain. He wasn’t the last to leave. Four or five months later, per the FIR, the company itself folded, and Kulwinder Singh — the same man accused of failing to deliver on the original contract — arranged and paid for the return tickets of the others: Gurmit Singh, Sukhdev Singh, and Gagandeep Singh. An agent named Nirbhai Singh, linked to an entity called M S Worldpath Recruiter LLP, is named alongside Kulwinder in the FIR.
Written agreement–only on paper
NRI Recruitment Fraud: There is, in the middle of this complaint, a moment that reads almost like resolution — and then isn’t. On December 30, 2025, Harjinder’s complaint states, Kulwinder Singh agreed to settle: ₹2.5 lakh, on paper, in what the FIR describes as a written agreement between the two men. Harjinder says he waited. The money, per his account, never came. What did come, he alleges, were more promises, and eventually, silence.
It’s a familiar arc to anyone who has followed this beat: a contract, a payment, a promise of documentation that never comes, and a settlement that dissolves into another year of waiting. What makes this FIR notable is how long the paper trail behind it runs. Harjinder’s complaint states that he first approached the NRI Wing in Punjab in September 2025 nearly a year before the FIR was registered.
The file describes a chain of inquiry officers, re-verification requests, and at least one “speaking order” directing the case back for further examination, before the police finally registered it this week.
Whether the ten-month gap reflects due diligence or the kind of institutional drag that NRI-fraud complainants often describe is, for now, an open question.
The FIR has been registered under BNS 316(2) (criminal breach of trust) and 318(4) (cheating), along with Section 24 of the Emigration Act, 1983, which governs unlawful recruitment for overseas employment.
None of the allegations against Kulwinder Singh or Nirbhai Singh have yet been tested in a court of law.
This report is based on the First Information Report filed with Punjab police; North Desk has not independently verified them.
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