The Hindu : New Delhi News : Four held for Rs. 5 crore e-ticketing racket

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Monday, Dec 29, 2008
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New Delhi

Four held for Rs. 5 crore e-ticketing racket

Ashok Kumar

Photo R V Moorthy

The three travel agents and a woman arrested for the 5-crore e-ticketing racket in New Delhi on Sunday.

NEW DELHI: Four persons, including a woman, have been arrested by the Crime Branch of the Delhi police for their alleged involvement in a major e-ticketing racket that cheated several private banks, airlines and railways of over Rs.5 crore by procuring tickets through stolen credit card details.

The gang had been operating in major cities across the country like Mumbai, Hyderabad, Chennai and Jamshedpur for almost a year and bought more than 5,000 airline and railway tickets using stolen credit card data. More than 40 national and international banks and half-a-dozen airlines have been cheated.

The alleged mastermind of the gang, Naeem Ahmed (24), used to procure credit card details via e-mail from one Karampal Kaur Sethi alias Manjit Kaur (50) in Bangkok and buy airline and railway tickets through the Internet. Naeem, a resident of Kolkata, would sell these tickets to travel agents who further sold them to customers at less than half the original rates. The fraud would come to light more than a month after the ticket was bought when the airlines and the bank try to realise the money from the credit card holder.

Two travel agents -- Shahid Iqbal (25) and Feroz Alam (23) -- have also been arrested in this connection. Both of them own travel agencies in Kolkata.

A Crime Branch team led by Inspector Jitender Kundu took up investigation following a complaint by American Express Bank regarding credit card abuse and similar complaints by Kingfisher Airlines and Spice Jet. The team found that the gang had been operating from Kolkata and arrested the three accused on December 20.

“The interrogation of the accused revealed that Naeem would deposit the share of Manjit Kaur in an Axis Bank account opened in the name of her daughter Kanika Budhiraja (27), a resident of Rana Pratap Bagh in Delhi. Kanika, a housewife, would withdraw the money from the account and sent it to her mother and brother Sanjit Singh in Bangkok through illicit channels. Kanika was arrested on December 26,” said Inspector Kundu. Kanika, who was born in Thailand, completed her graduation from Delhi University and settled in the Capital after her marriage to a businessman.

“Efforts are on to arrest Manjit Kaur with the help of Interpol. Her interrogation would reveal how she procured the credit card details. Names of some travel agents in the Capital also come up during the investigation,” said Mr. Kundu.

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