Hamilton, New Zealand, Jan 20, 2019:
By Gurbir Singh
A former forklift driver of Hamilton who has been in New Zealand since 2009, has gone into hiding to avoid forceful deportation for “falsifying his Indian driving licence”until his appeal to the Ombudsman is known.
A resident of district Amritsar, ,Jodhbir Singh,31,has started to live separately from his wife, Sawreet Kaur and their three-year-old son who was born in New Zealand.
He was served a Deportation Liability Notice in June last year following an allegation that he submitted a false Indian Driver’s License to support an application for a New Zealand visa.
Jodhbir’s visa was linked to his wife’s job as a restaurant manager and she and her son are eligible to stay here until 2020.
He,however, has denied this allegation of license forgery, but his appeal to the Immigration and Protection Tribunal (IPT) against deportation was rejected last October.
He was given six weeks to leave voluntarily after he lost at the tribunal, but he gained time by producing a return ticket to Immigration for 25 December, but did not leave. He has now filed an appeal to Ombudsman through his immigration consultant, Tuariki Delamere.
When this journalist contacted Delamere (a former NZ Minister for Immigration) yesterday, he said “I suspect that he (Jodhbir) was being set-up by corrupt INZ Indian officers for blackmail/bribery, in conjunction with a corrupt Data Flow investigator. It is, to my mind, the only thing that makes sense.”
Delamere contends the online evidence of district transport authority proves that his licence is legitimate, and has provided this journalist exclusive access to this information.
In her conversation with this journalist, Jodhbir’s wife said “He has spent last 9 years in NZ working full time. He got NZ licence by passing all required tests and got forklift licence by getting training and certificates from NZ. He got no driving convictions at all in 9 years (and) no criminal history. So, how is his character in question to INZ, just by finding out a 12-year-old Indian licence which is still in debate.”
Jodhbir’s events started unfolding when he attached a copy of his Indian driver’s licence with his application for a work to residency application ....
Read the full coverage here:
http://www.newsviews.co.nz/hamiltons-jodhbir-goes-into-hiding-to-avoid-deportation/
--Gurbir Singh is a Hamilton-based freelance Journalist and Editor, Newsviews.co.nz