Editor Mr.Mayank Rawat ( Chief Editor Mr. Rohit Mishra )
New Delhi: Two men who allegedly ran an online racket promising cheap national and international airline tickets have been arrested by Delhi Police.
The scam came to light when a complaint was registered by a resident of northwest Delhi’s Siraspur in Nov 2024 through National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, said police. “The complainant responded to a social media ad for cheap Delhi-Toronto air tickets, sharing his details with the scammer to book a ticket. The scammer booked a ticket on an airline site, asked for payment, but never sent him the ticket,” DCP (outer north) Nidhin Valsan said.
A cheating case was registered under Section 318 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. “A special team was formed that used technical surveillance and analysed the call details of the suspected numbers, bank accounts were tracked, and a money trail was established,” said Valsan. Raids were conducted in Maharashtra and south Delhi’s Lajpat Nagar-2, leading to the arrests.
The accused were identified as Salman Sayeed Siddiqui (50), arrested on April 5 from Delhi, and Rohit Rajaram Ghanekar (29), caught from Maharashtra on April 2. They operated through social media, creating fake pages posing as legitimate travel agencies. Flashy ads with too-good-to-be-true ticket prices were used to lure people. Once contact was established via WhatsApp and virtual numbers, they collected personal and financial information, often booking tickets with stolen credentials and cancelling them post-payment—or not booking them at all, police said.
Police identified Siddiqui as the alleged kingpin of the racket and found that he wasn’t new to the world of ticketing and deception. “With a formal background in travel and tourism, a degree from a prominent university in Hyderabad and a certification from an airline trade association, he used his industry knowledge to pull off the scam.
Siddiqui worked with multiple agencies in Mumbai before launching his own travel business. “In 2023, he was arrested in a case involving fake international flight bookings in Mumbai, following which he shifted to Delhi to stay under the radar,” a senior officer said.
Ghanekar had a chequered past in cyber fraud support roles. “A school dropout from Raigarh, he moved to Mumbai in search of work and soon began procuring fake SIM cards and mule bank accounts for scam networks, an expertise he brought into this con,” the officer said.
Mayank Rawat
