PK Jaiswar
Amritsar, April 3
Five persons from Bathinda, Barnala and Muktsar Sahib were duped of Rs 22.71 lakh by a fake travel agency on the pretext of sending them to Germany.
The incident occurred in September 2019, though a case was registered with the Division A police here on Saturday, following probe submitted by the anti-human trafficking wing of the city police.
A case was registered with the Division A police here on Saturday, following probe submitted by the anti-human trafficking wing of the city police
Among those booked are Rajwinder Kaur, Jagdeep Singh, Sandeep Singh, Aman, Priya, Baljit Singh Randhawa, Pankaj Khokhar, Soni. All of them used to run a travel agency in the name of Rustam Enterprises located in the City Centre Market near the interstate bus terminus here.
Complainants Surinder Singh and Chamkaur Singh of Bathinda, Harpreet Singh and Surinder Singh of Barnala and Gurpreet Singh of Muktsar Sahib said they had approached Rustam Enterprises in September 2019. They promised to send them to Germany and for this, they demanded Rs7 lakh each. While Surinder Singh had given Rs4.38 lakh in total on different dates, Chamkaur Singh, Harpreet Singh, Gurpreet Singh and Surinder Singh paid Rs4.95 lakh, Rs4.45 lakh, Rs4.45 lakh and Rs4.48 lakh to them, respectively.
Surinder Singh said the accused called them to Delhi in January last year, where they took 300 Euros from each of them and also took their passports. They said the passports would reach them by post and handed over a ticket to Chamkaur Singh. He said they got suspicious and got the tickets verified, which were found to be fake.
He said the accused thereafter abruptly closed their office and went underground and their phone numbers were also switched off.
The police authorities said the probe was handed over to the anti-human trafficking unit, which recommended registration of an FIR against the suspects.
The police have now registered a case under Sections 406, 420 and 120-B of the IPC against them, while no arrest has been made so far. The police said investigations were on to find the whereabouts of the accused.
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