The couple had booked a trip to Maldives in February 2022 but were cheated of their money through a company that they had come across on Instagram. In November 2022, the Thane police arrested representatives of the company based on a complaint by the couple.
Here is the story of how they were defrauded, as narrated by the victims:
“On Instagram, we saw a post by a travel company offering deals for a holiday in the Maldives, and made the booking. The company had a website too, and when we visited the site, we could see that many people had left their reviews, all very good reviews. It was based on those reviews that we booked our holiday through this agency.
We are Thane residents and run our own business. It was my wife who wanted to go to Maldives, and it was she who spotted a post by a travel company on Instagram. We made the booking by calling the number given on the post. The travel company first took an advance and booked the flight tickets and sent them through e-mail. After this, the travel company asked for money for hotel bookings, which my wife paid.
We transferred a total of Rs 2.20 lakh to the bank account given by the travel company. The name and booking ID of the hotel in Maldives were given to us via email. It was when we called the hotel to verify that we found out that a booking had been made but not the payment.
We called the travel company back, and they first said they would make the hotel payment soon, but after that the representative of the company stopped answering our calls.
Via the company’s Instagram page, we found other users commenting that the company was not responding to calls. We then contacted others who had similarly been defrauded and soon found that we were about 90 couples who had made bookings through this travel company which was no longer answering our calls.
We found that some couples had even reached Maldives and gone to the hotel only to find out that their payment was pending. They had then called the travel company, which however did not answer their calls.
We registered a police complaint and also formed a WhatsApp group of more than 60 couples who were similarly cheated."
