Immigration found my friend's passport already in use

My friend have an Indian passport. He has applied for visa in a country. That country has rejected his visa saying there is another person with the same name and passport no in their country and their is no record of that person now.

It seems that person committed an identity theft and used his passport. Now, We are not sure what to do?

Will a police complaint help or can something else be done?

Best Answer

I can't say much about India specifically, but in most countries in the world, you would proceed as follows:

Use the formal rejection by the foreign country's embassy with the stated reason to file that with the police, so that they can mark the passport as invalid/duplicated/stolen in their system.
Then, use the confirmation by the police to get a new passport with the autoroties while handing back the old one.
Once the new passport has been handed over, the visa process can be repeated. Make sure to hand in a copy of the police confirmation of having the passport reported as being copied when applying for the new visa.

In a sense, the process should be the same as after having a passport stolen.