The Delhi Police has busted a gang that defrauded individuals promoting them air tickets on-line solely to cancel them later, officers mentioned on Friday.
The two masterminds of the operation, recognized as Pravin Tiwari, a resident of Bahraich (UP), and Rohit Kumar, a resident of Rewari (Haryana) — each aged 34 years — have been arrested.
The officers mentioned they’ve recovered a gold chain from the accused — bought from the cheated cash — and seized Rs 61,267 discovered of their checking account.
The police mentioned the fraud was uncovered on March 29, when a Delhi University professor filed a grievance alleging getting scammed by a reserving agent on-line.
According to the grievance, the professor was to journey to Canada to attend an official programme within the first week of April. On March 23, a feminine pupil of his made searches on his behalf for good offers on journey tickets on an app. After a while, she obtained a number of calls with reserving affords.
The pupil, the grievance mentioned, struck a cope with an agent named Pravin Tiwari.
Tiwari reportedly ‘booked’ the tickets and despatched their copies to her on WhatsApp and requested her to deposit Rs 1,49,730 in a checking account he gave her, which the professor did.
Later, when the complainant checked the small print of the ticket with the airline, he was instructed that the tickets had been cancelled. When he referred to as the agent who had booked the tickets, he discovered his quantity switched off.
Following the grievance, an investigation was taken up, throughout which it was revealed that a number of different individuals had been defrauded the identical method, a senior police official mentioned.
Its investigation led the police to conduct a raid in Zirakpur in Punjab, however the accused had left the hideout a day earlier than the police staff might attain there.
Deputy Commissioner of Police (North) Sagar Singh Kalsi mentioned that their staff bought a tipoff that Tiwari, one of many accused, was going to get engaged on April 14 in UP’s Baharich.
He mentioned a staff was rushed to Bahraich which arrested each the accused from the city.
“During interrogation, It was found that Tiwari had met Rohit Kumar in Pune in 2016. They both started working as travel agents and suffered heavy losses,” the officer mentioned.
“A few months ago they shifted base to Zirakpur, where they hatched a plan to cheat prospective travellers. The accused then registered themselves as agents on Sulekha mobile app using fake mobile numbers and waited for leads,” he mentioned.
The accused would contact the shoppers with engaging affords for air tickets. They would e-book the tickets and get the consumers to make fee after sending them the tickets on WhatsApp.
“Once they would receive the money, they would cancel the tickets and switch off their mobile phones,” mentioned the DCP.
Source: www.financialexpress.com”