The police proposed to unleash a crackdown on them within this week, said GD Pandey, additional director general of police (crime).
CHANDIGARH: While the two travel agents from Punjab who had links with BJP MP Babubhai Katara and are suspected to be part of a human trafficking racket are still absconding, the state police have identified more than 350 unscrupulous travel agents against whom complaints of cheating and defrauding have been pending.
The police proposed to unleash a crackdown on them within this week, said GD Pandey, additional director general of police (crime).
He said the two travel agents, Joginder Singh and Santu Masih, who had facilitated a tie-up of Kapurthala-based woman Paramjeet Kaur and a Hoshiarpur district boy Amarijit Singh, with the BJP MP for an illegal migration to Canada, had been missing ever since the news of the arrest broke out.
A police party from Delhi carried out raids at more than a dozen places in the two districts looking for the two agents, who had been involved in human trafficking for more than five years.
Pandey said there had been complaints against Joginder Singh earlier also when he reportedly duped gullible youths promising them jobs on foreign lands. Similarly more than 350 other agents had been identified in Jalandhar, Nawanshahar, Ludhiana, Kapurthala and Hoshiarpur districts where people aspiring to go abroad have been cheated of heavy sums.
Illegal immigration had been lately gaining ground with many countries offering job avenues. More than 7,000 Punjabi youths were deported last year from various countries for trying to immigrate illegally. Besides tampering passports, these travel agents had been clandestinely arranging for visas without sharing the full information with the applicants. “As the deals are struck verbally, travel agents can get away with it without moral compunction or legal hassles,” Pandey added.
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