2 youths in Indonesian Jail: Travel agent, accomplice among 3 booked

Tribune News Service

PK Jaiswar

Amritsar, May 24

Days after the two Amritsar youths landed in the Indonesia jail after they boarded a flight for the USA, the Amritsar rural police have booked Delhi-based travel agent Charanjit Singh Sodhi, his accomplice Sunny Kumar and an unknown person on the charges of cheating and human trafficking.

A case under Section 420 of the Indian Penal

Code (IPC) and Section 13 of the Punjab Travel Professional Regulation Act, 2014, was against them at the Gharinda police station here.

The FIR was registered on the complaint of Sukhchain Singh, a resident of Maude village, and father of Ajaypal Singh, one of the victims.

Ajaypal (20) and his cousin Gurmail Singh (21) of Gaggomahal village in Ajnala were arrested by the Indonesian police allegedly on the charges of murder this month.

The incident came to light when the news of their arrest circulated on the social media. The family members of the victims left devastated as they mortgaged their properties to realise the dreams of their son.

The duo left for the USA from the New Delhi airport on May 9. They hardly had any inkling that they had fallen in the trap of fake travel agents. They reached Indonesia as ‘guided’ by Sodhi whose accomplices received them at the Indonesian airport from where they were taken into a room, said Gurmail’s father Sahib Singh. He said they came to know that they were tortured and forced to make calls to their family claiming they have reached safely.

He said Sodhi demanded Rs 35 lakh for each child. He asked them to keep 5,000US$ with them during the journey. The amount was forcibly taken away by Sodhi’s accomplices in Indonesia who also thrashed them.

Sahib Singh, who runs a flour mill in the village, said he mortgaged his house and property to arrange money to send his son abroad. He said he barely anticipated that his son would land in such a trouble.

NRI Affair Minister Kuldeep Singh said the Punjab Government was taking up their cases at the appropriate platforms to get them released.