Police crack down on travel agents in Ludhiana, register 8 FIRs

Coming down heavily on unauthorised travel agents, city police on Tuesday registered eight FIRs.

The Division Number 2 police have booked a travel agent, Vatan Arora alias Lucky, of Rajasthan’s Alwar following the complaint of Shamsher Singh of Islam Gunj in Ludhiana.

Shamsher said the accused had duped him of ₹50,000 on the pretext of sending his son to Singapore by arranging work permit for him.

He alleged that the accused neither sent his son abroad nor return his money.

Similarly, Sadar police have booked travel agent Narinder Singh of Daad village for duping members of a gatka (traditional Sikh martial arts) group. The FIR has been registered following the statement of a member of the group, Surjit Singh of Humbran village.

Surjit said the accused took ₹45 lakh from them for sending their group abroad.

“When the accused failed to arrange visas for us, he returned ₹13 lakh, but refused to give the remaining ₹32 lakh back,” he added.

Surjit had lodged a complaint against the accused on May 11, 2019 and after investigation, the Sadar police registered an FIR on Tuesday.

Daba police have booked five travel agents — Prince of Jalandhar and Sushil Kumar, Rajpreet Kaur, Mandeep Singh and Priya of Amritsar — on the complaint of Bharmeet Singh of Maha Singh Nagar in Ludhiana.

Bharmeet said the accused duped him of ₹5.3 lakh on the pretext of sending him to Cyprus, but rather sent him to Turkey.

Meanwhile, Division Number 5 police booked Rupinder Garcha of Gobindpur village for duping Yogesh Sharma of Kailash Nagar of ₹1 lakh. In second such case, Jaswinder Singh alias Raja of Bhai Randhir Singh Nagar was booked for duping a woman, Hardeep Kaur, of Sangrur of ₹1 lakh on the pretext of sending her husband and daughter to Canada.

In the third case registered at the same police station, Gurwinder Singh alias Mohit Sharma of Feroze Gandhi Market was booked for duping Anil Kumar of Bhamiyan Road of ₹1.3 lakh. The accused had given him an offer letter from Germany, which was later found to be fake.

Focal Point police have booked Shankar alias Jatin of Gobind Nagar and Rajbir alias Aman following the complaint of Prabhjot Singh of Jeevan Nagar.

Prabhjot said the accused took ₹4.4 lakh from him and his two relatives — Lakhwinder Singh and Avtar Singh — for sending them to Armenia and arranging jobs for them. After reaching Armenia, the accused also took $4,500 from them, but did not arrange jobs, following which they had to return to India.

Jamalpur police have booked Raminderdeep Singh of Amritsar following the complaint of Karamjit Singh of Bhukhri Kalan for duping him of ₹75,000 on the pretext of sending him to Kuwait on work visa, but sent him to Dubai on a tourist visa.

All the cases have been registered under Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 24 of the Immigration Act.