Eyeing greener pastures, youth falling prey to scams

Aakanksha N Bhardwaj

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 7

Youth in Punjab dream of shifting abroad but reports of several of them being duped by travel agents are becoming common with each passing day.

Also, youngsters, it seems, aren’t ready to learn their lesson and keep falling prey to such fraudsters every now and then.

Jaswinder Ram (27) in his complainant to the police said he gave Rs2.5 lakh to a travel agent with a promise that he would send him to Italy. Jaswinder, who belongs to an economically weaker family, said he had extreme difficulty in arranging the money. He took loans from various parties, but the travel agent failed to send him abroad.

“My financial condition is in a mess. Neither have I received my money back, nor I am able to pay it back to my lenders, who are also harassing me,” he said.

The Behram police have filed an FIR against the travel agent under Section 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust), 420 (cheating and dishonestly inducing delivery of property) of the IPC and Punjab Travel Professionals (Regulation) Act, 2014.

As per the information, there are nearly 15 cases pending at Behram police station alone, wherein youths have been duped by travel agents.

The police said an FIR was registered, but no arrest has been made in the case so far. Further investigations, however, are on in these cases.

Foreign dreams dashed, Not the first time

• Jaswinder Ram (27) in his complaint at Behram police station said he gave Rs2.5 lakh to a travel agent with a promise that he would send him to Italy. Jaswinder, who belongs to an economically weaker family, said he had extreme difficulty in arranging the money. He took loans from various parties, but the travel agent failed to send him abroad.
• Gurpreet Singh (22) of Nurmahal had a dream to go to Canada and earn well for his family. For this, he took the IELTS exam a number of times and finally managed to clear it two years ago. The family took the help of a Ludhiana-based travel agent, but the latter duped the victim of Rs5.6 lakh. A case was reported from Nurmahal.
• Similarly, Rajinder Singh (26), a youth from Bilga, was also been duped by a travel agent from Uttar Pradesh, who had allegedly taken more than Rs3.5 lakh from the victim on the pretext of sending him to Italy.
• The Nawanshahr police also registered a case against the agents who allegedly duped Gurbaksh Kaur (43) and Reena Rani (23) of Garhi Fateh Khan village by sending them to Saudi Arab instead of Malaysia. The case had grabbed headlines as Reena had also sent a video to her family, wherein she was seen crying and asking her brother to get them back home, else they would die. Angad Singh, MLA, had written to the Minister of External Affairs (MEA), to intervene in the matter and rescue the woman-daughter duo