Indian pilgrims who have gone missing in Auckland appear to have been involved in an immigration scam.
The Labour Department yesterday said it was searching for 32 pilgrims who disappeared from their New Zealand billets while staying in Auckland prior to Catholic World Youth Day in Australia.
An Auckland Justice of the Peace has revealed some of them said they had paid $15,000 each to 'agents' in India who told them they could stay in New Zealand, Radio New Zealand reported.
Catholic Church spokesperson Lyndsay Freer said the news was "shocking".
"As far as I know nobody in the church would have any inkling that anything like this was happening. "It appears World Youth Day has been used as an excuse and that is really quite alarming. One hopes it doesn't reach a greater scale in Australia for example."
New Zealand Catholic Parishes are hosting 4000 pilgrims prior to the Youth Day. Amongst them, 220 Indian worshippers were given one-month visitor visas earlier this month and were due to fly out today.
The 32 went missing at various times over the past four or five days.
The Labour Department said yesterday they were legally permitted to stay as long as their visas remained valid.
Immigration New Zealand was working closely with its counterparts in Australia on the matter.
