E-Paper
{‘Donkey route’ to Russia} Two travel agents booked 7 months after 18-year-old youth goes missing
Seven months after an 18-year-old boy, who was on his way to Russia through ‘donkey route’ went missing under mysterious circumstances in Latvia in Northern Europe, two travel agents have been booked for duping Kapurthala family of lakhs of rupees.
Blurb: Sagar’s parents have sent their DNA samples for identification of a body on request of Latvian army
Jalandhar
Seven months after an 18-year-old boy, who was on his way to Russia through ‘donkey route’ went missing under mysterious circumstances in Latvia in Northern Europe, two travel agents have been booked for duping Kapurthala family of lakhs of rupees.
The “donkey route” is a term used by traffickers in Punjab to describe a circuitous and potentially dangerous journey that migrants take to reach other countries, usually the US.
The accused travel agents have been identified as Rajinder Kumar of Kartarpur in Jalandhar district and Gaurav Kumar of Sangrur.
Sagar, a resident of Kapurthala’s Bholath, left India on January 6 for Russia via France, Belarus, Latvia and Germany. His family last heard from him on February 25. Following this, the family contacted the travel agents and Sagar’s co-travellers.
Bholath station house officer (SHO) Harjinder Singh said Sagar’s father Bobby Chand told police that the accused travel agents kept on telling them that their son had been arrested by Latvian army while crossing the border illegally.
“Contrary to this, Sagar’s co-travellers told the family that Sagar died after he was stuck in heavy snowfall in March,” Chand said in his complaint.
Police said that one of Sagar’s co-travellers informed the family over a phone that a group of eight youths was crossing through Latvia when it started snowing heavily. “Five youths managed to take shelter in a car while three were stuck in the snow. It was later found that two youths managed to reach a safe place, but Sagar got stuck in the snow and died following which his body was retrieved,” the police said.
However, the travel agents told the family that co-travellers managed to sneak into Germany but Sagar was caught by the Latvian army and was presently lodged in jail.
After the recovery of an unidentified body following heavy snowfall, the Latvian army had formally approached Kapurthala police and sent a communiqué, asking for DNA samples of Sagar’s parents for identification of the body.
The SHO said the health department has taken DNA samples of Sagar’s parents and sent them to the Latvian authorities but they have raised some objections on the packaging of the samples. The samples will be collected again, he added.
The travel agents demanded ₹14 lakh from the family to send Sagar to Russia through their Delhi-based contact. The family claimed that they had already paid ₹8 lakh to the agents.
The accused travel agents have been booked under Sections of 420 (cheating) and 406 (punishment for criminal breach of trust) of Indian Penal Code.
The IPC sections have been invoked as the ‘sequence of crime events’ took place before June 30. The Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita (BNS) was affected from July 1. Police said the raids are on to arrest the accused.
