Two held in Delhi for running fake safari booking racket across India

The Gandhinagar-based Cyber Centre of Excellence of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)-Crime arrested the duo from Delhi and brought them to Gujarat, an official statement said

Published on: Oct 22, 2025, 21:58:09 IST

By Maulik Pathak

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Ahmedabad: Two Delhi residents were arrested for allegedly running a pan-India fake safari booking racket by exploiting official websites of major national parks, including Gir National Park in Gujarat, to sell permits at inflated rates, police said on Wednesday.

Police said the two had created fake identities to bulk-book safari slots in advance through official portals, thereby creating an artificial shortage of permits (Representative photo)

The Gandhinagar-based Cyber Centre of Excellence of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID)-Crime arrested the duo from Delhi and brought them to Gujarat, an official statement said.

According to police, Ajaykumar Chaudhary, originally from Bihar’s Begusarai, was living in Delhi’s Badli, and Arvind Upadhyay, originally from Uttar Pradesh’s Ghaziabad, was residing in Delhi’s Karol Bagh.

Police said the two had created fake identities to bulk-book safari slots in advance through official portals, thereby creating an artificial shortage of permits. They then resold those permits through privately operated websites designed to resemble official government portals.

“The accused were selling safari permits for Gir in Gujarat, Ranthambhore in Rajasthan, Tadoba in Maharashtra, Jim Corbett in Uttarakhand, Kaziranga in Assam, and Bandhavgarh in Madhya Pradesh through fraudulent websites that charged far above the government-approved rates,” the statement said.

Officers said police found more than 12,000 unauthorised safari permits, 8,650 booking confirmation emails, and 10,278 linked PDFs.

Police officials said the accused also promoted the fake booking sites through social media and online travel groups, giving the impression of a legitimate service.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maulik Pathak
He is an Ahmedabad-based journalist with more than two decades of experience. His career spans business journalism and general news, with reporting across politics, crime, governance, public policy, business, industry, infrastructure, energy, ports, aviation, the environment, wildlife and social issues. He began his career in feature writing before moving into business journalism, reporting on companies and sectors including energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and real estate. Over the years, his work expanded to politics, courts, crime, public policy, civic affairs, the environment and wildlife. His reporting has taken him from government offices and courtrooms to factory floors, ports, forests and remote villages, covering stories that range from industrial investments and financial markets to elections, conservation and issues affecting everyday life. While many assignments demand the pace of the daily news cycle, others require sustained reporting over months and years to follow developments beyond the headlines. He started his journalism career with the Asian Age in Ahmedabad in 2002 as a feature writer and sub-editor. Since 2022, he has been working with Hindustan Times. Earlier, he worked with Business Standard, DNA, The Economic Times, Mint and The Times of India. His longest stint was with Mint, where he spent more than eight years reporting across multiple beats. During his career, he has worked in both reporting and editing roles, contributing to page planning, local editions and special editorial projects as newsrooms evolved from print-first operations to digital publishing. Early in his career, he also worked on media and documentary projects with an NGO and as a copywriter at a communications agency before returning to journalism. Away from work, he sometimes makes time for a pair of binoculars, table tennis, cinema and the occasional poem.Read More

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