Bengaluru: City police will soon launch a special drive to weed out foreigners who overstay their visas.The drive comes against the backdrop of cops booking 116 house owners since 2022 for renting their premises to foreigners without informing the local police and the Foreigners’ Regional Registration Office (FRRO), and violating the Immigration and Foreigners Act. After the Central Crime Branch (CCB) arrested two foreigners recently for overstaying, the owner of their rented two-bedroom house at Chudasandra, in southeast Bengaluru, was booked as she had not followed the rules and informed FRRO and the police about renting out her property to foreigners. The house owner was fined Rs 5,000 and made to sign an undertaking at the jurisdictional Parappana Agrahara police station, stating that henceforth, she would keep the police and FRRO informed when renting out property to foreigners. The drive to ensure house owners inform police and FRRO about foreigners living in their properties began in 2022, when three cases were booked. In 2023, only two cases were booked, but the number rose to 45 in 2024 and 66 so far in 2025. City police commissioner Seemanth Kumar Singh told TOI that cops would work with the FRRO and other agencies to trace overstaying foreign nationals in the city. “Also, when we receive local information on foreigners living in rented accommodation, jurisdictional police will act swiftly and check the documents of the owner as well as the tenants. In the coming days, we will carry out special drives to find overstaying foreigners,” he said.A senior CCB officer said over 100 of the 116 owners booked had rented their properties after checking the student visas of their tenants. “The house owners failed to notice that the visas had expired long ago. Also, in many cases, agents approached the house owners with a promise that the proposed tenants had applied for visa extension. The agents, rewarded with one month’s rent by the tenant as well as the owner, handle all the paperwork, such as arranging the rental agreement and getting the signatures of the parties. In some cases, the house owner was not aware more people than mentioned were living in the house,” the officer said. Another officer said the house owners charged foreigners nearly double the average rent. “If locals were to pay Rs 20,000 for a two-bedroom unit in Chudasandra, foreign nationals were asked to pay at least Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000. This is another reason house owners hurriedly rent out properties to foreigners,” he said. According to city police data, the east, northeast, southeast, and Whitefield divisions are favoured by foreign nationals looking to rent houses. “These are the pockets comprising a big share of the city’s floating population. The fact their compatriots are already living there encourages foreign nationals to settle in the same area,” a senior police officer said.
