Travel agency dupes 90 youths of Rs.2.5 crore, two held

AMBALA - Two people have been arrested for allegedly duping 90 youths of nearly Rs.2.5 crore on the pretext of sending them abroad on work permits, police said here Monday.

Rupesh Kumar and Manmohan Singh, who were running a travel agency called Capital Emigration and Education Services in this Haryana town, some 35 km from Chandigarh, were arrested late Sunday from neighbouring Punjab’s Jalandhar city.

“We had received a complaint that the two had taken money ranging from Rs.2 lakh to Rs.3 lakh each from around 90 youths and promised to send them to Singapore on work permits. They had also assured them lucrative jobs there. They had collected nearly Rs.2.5 crore but neither did they send them abroad and nor did they return the money,” Rajbir Singh, investigating officer of the case, told IANS.

“We raided their office on May 16. Though we did not find anybody in the office, we seized several passports and visa documents from there. We then sent police teams to various places to arrest the accused. Yesterday (Sunday) we arrested two of them while four others are still absconding,” the officer said.

Most of the duped youths are from nearby villages and belonged to lower middle-class families.

According to the complaint, the accused had called the youths to the Indira Gandhi International airport in New Delhi May 15. They were to board their flight at 4 p.m. and were told that the visa documents and flight tickets would be given to them at the airport.

But no one from the travel agency turned up and they stopped answering calls from the job aspirants.

“Earlier also we had received complaints about unscrupulous travel agents from this area. We will try to unearth their network and links with other people. We will arrest the remaining accused soon,” Rajbir Singh said.