Family duped of ₹50,000 on the pretext of a Thailand trip

A 38-year-old executive of a Mumbai-based company was allegedly duped of ₹50,000 by a man, who introduced himself as the director of an online travel company in Gurugram and promised to organise a round-trip for him and his family to Thailand. The victim complained to the commissioner of police in December, following which the cyber cell of Gurugram Police completed the investigation and filed a case on Tuesday, said the police.

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According to the complainant, Pankaj Surana, who is a resident of Thane in Mumbai, the suspect contacted him through an online travel aggregator on October 23, 2019, as he was looking for a trip organiser. Surana said he paid the suspect ₹50,000 as advance money to book flight tickets and hotel rooms for four nights and five days in Phuket and Bangkok.

The police said the victim later found out that their flight bookings were cancelled and that the hotel bookings were never made by the suspect’s online travel company, which was supposedly situated on Golf Course Extension Road.

Preet Pal Sangwan, the assistant commissioner of police (crime), said the family was supposed to fly to Bangkok on December 20 but about a month before, they found out that they had been duped.

The suspect, identified as Abhishek Bhasin, a resident of Gurugram, is on the run, the police said on Wednesday. A case was registered against him under section 420 (cheating), 406 (criminal breach of trust) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and Section 66 of Information Technology Act at the cyber police station on Tuesday night.

The victim said he had sent the passport details to the suspect on November 1 and was told that the ticket details would be sent to him by November 5. “However, after I transferred the amount, he stopped taking my calls. But when I texted him to refund my money, he assured that he will send hotel details before November 9. Later, he switched off his mobile phone and I realised that I was duped,” said Surana.

The victim tried contacting the given landline numbers but could not get through. Even the company’s page on Facebook was removed, said the police. Sangwan said they had sent a police team to the given address but failed to locate the office.

“We have received more than 27 complaints against the same company in the last one month and families from six states have been duped including those from Andhra Pradesh. We are trying to check the call records of the suspect to get details of people he was in touch with,” said Sangwan.