Fijian man fakes family massacre in order to get New Zealand residency

A Fijian man sought residency in New Zealand after claiming his whole family had been killed by a group of Bangladeshis.

Satya Nand's elaborate, fake and rambling story was revealed in the Tauranga District Court earlier this month after he was sentenced to 29 months imprisonment after pleading guilty to a representative charge of using false documentation to obtain a benefit.

Nand arrived in New Zealand on a visitor visa in 1996.

Two years later he had created a new identity with a new name Rana Khan and a false story that he was a refugee.

He claimed he was born in India and went to Bangladesh when he was a year old and that his family were killed when he was 18-years-old.

Nand had claimed he was persecuted, beaten up and stabbed at the refugee camp in Bangladesh so he stowed away on a ship to Hong Kong and eventually New Zealand.

However, Immigration New Zealand didn't believe his story.

Immigration New Zealand's assistant general manager, Peter Devoy, said the whole story was a lie.

Devoy says the man had never been to either India or Bangladesh and in fact was in Fiji and New Zealand for the entire time.

He said Nand managed to obtain New Zealand residence and subsequently citizenship after creating for himself a new identity, obtaining identity documents in his false name, completing statutory declarations about his background and using documentation to obtain benefits for himself, his wife and three children.

Devoy said he was caught as a result of painstaking investigative work by their compliance officers who managed to locate him under his true Fijian identity and then uncovered his fraud and false identity.

Source: RadioNZ