Brijesh Mishra, who was recently arrested for his involvement in the fraudulent admissions case concerning Indian students in Canada, has criminal charges which date back to 2016, as per Canadian media reports.
Brijesh Mishra currently faces five charges from the Canadian Border Service Agency under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Four of them were filed in Jalandhar, India from 2016-2020, and one in Surrey, B.C. from April 17 to June 14, 2023. The charges are:
IRPA Section 91(1) Unauthorised Representation or Advice for Consideration – one count.
IRPA Section 126 Counselling Misrepresentation – one count.
IRPA Section 127(a) Misrepresentation (Direct or Indirect Misrepresentation) – one count.
IRPA Section 127(b) Misrepresentation (Communicating False Information) – one count.
IRPA Section 124(1)(a) Non-Compliance with the Act – one count.
Mishra was arrested on June 14 by the Canadian authorities, when he tried to re-enter the North American country through a land border with the United States. Mishra had to attend a detention review with the Immigration and Refugee Board 48 hours later.
Though The Free Press Journal had learned that Mishra had a bail hearing on June 26, a spokesperson for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada told New Canadian Media (NCM) that he remains in custody.
As per Canadian media reports. Mishra’s visa to Canada was canceled by the Canadian mission in Delhi in 2019, and despite putting out an alert against him in February 2021, he managed to cross the U.S. border into Canada in October 2022.
During his hearing for bail, B.C. provincial court judge Justice L. N. Bakan told lawyers that he will release Mishra on the condition that he doesn't visit the BC Cannabis store at 4429 Kingsway Ave which could mean that it is a place where he can meet potential complainants.
According to NCM, Mishra was in court on June 27 to confirm a trial date and returned to court on July 4, adjourning his case until August 2023.
The fact that Canada has formed a task force with representatives from the CBSA and Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) to look into the records of hundreds of former Indian students who entered the country between 2017 and 2020 using phoney admission letters allegedly provided by Mishra makes the latter's arrest significant.
The former students claim that Mishra signed their admission documents and charged them somewhere between Rs. 15 and Rs. 20 lakhs. The majority of them are from Punjab.
The former students eventually realised that their admissions hadn't been recognised, forcing them to accept enrolment at less prestigious, tier-2 institutions, despite the immigration agency allegedly assuring them that they had been accepted to prominent Canadian universities like Seneca, Humber, etc.
Once their courses were complete, the students received work permits and finally moved on to the PR process, which is when the CBSA learned that the students' offer letters were fake.
