Held following a hoax hijack call, they were duped by a Delhi travel agent
Held following a hoax hijack call, they were duped by au00a0Delhi travel agent
The Delhi Police have arrested two travel agents who provided the fake visas to the 27 suspects arrested Wednesday night from the Delhi airport.
The accused were held following a hoax hijack call from Dubai. The security agencies were given the PNR numbers of the tickets possessed by the suspects.
It has now emerged that the 27 people - 15 from West Bengal, six from Punjab, four from Haryana and one each from Delhi and Bangladesh - fell to a conflict of interest between their handlers in Delhi and Dubai.
The two travel agents Rakesh Chopra and Sunil Bisht, owners of Pan India Travels situated in Connaught Place, faked the visas on the passport of the accused and had promised them jobs in Iraq. "The accused told the police that they were headed to Iraq via Dubai for jobs. The Dubai handler would have sent them to Iraq.
But it seems that at the eleventh hour there was some conflict of interest, which led to the Dubai agents' call to the Jet and Kingfisher airlines call centers that 27 people would try to hijack their evening flights to Dubai," said OP Mishra, Deputy Commissioner of Police, IGI airport.
He also pointed out that there might be a larger human trafficking net involved as people belonging to different states were sent to a common agent in Delhi for being sent to Iraq.
The police found no weapons or anything incriminating in the possession of the accused. The Delhi Police special cell, CISF and the IB are jointly investigating the matter.
"Each accused had spent Rs one lakh for a job in Iraq. They had given half of the money to the travel agents in India and they had to pay the balance to the agents in Dubai," Mishra added.
How they were nabbed?
A Kingfisher Airlines call centre in Pune received a phone call at around 12: 30 on Tuesday afternoon that 12 Bangladeshis would board the Dubai-bound Kingfisher flight at Delhi airport in the evening and might hijack the plane.
Another call was received at around 2 pm at the Jet Airways call centre in Delhi informing that 15-16 people from Bangladesh would board the Dubai-bound Jet flight at Delhi airport. "They have fake travel documents and they would hijack the plane," the call centre was told.
Both the planes were to leave for Dubai within 5 minutes of each other. The Kingfisher flight (IT041) was to leave for Dubai at 7:25 pm, while the Jet plane (9W548) was to take off at 7:30 pm.
Both calls turned out to be hoax, but they sent the security agencies at the Delhi airport into a tizzy with one team each of CISF, Delhi police special cell and IB team reaching the Indira Gandhi international airport to nab the suspected flyers.
A trap was laid and 27 people were arrested who were flying to Dubai on fake visas.
"They were allowed to enter the airport. They came in groups of five or six and approached the check-in counters. We had PNR numbers of the tickets possessed by the suspects. When they approached the immigration counters, the guard on duty identified them and alerted the CISF officials. We did not have to use force to nab them," a top official, involved in the operation, told MiD DAY.
Both the airlines have handed over the recordings of the telephone calls to the security agencies.
Though there was no official confirmation, but sources said five people have also been detained in Dubai in connection with the racket.
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