Driving Naari Programme launched in Chandigarh
New Delhi, December 29
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered an FIR after 22 teenagers from Punjab, Haryana and Delhi — illegally taken to France by three travel agents last year on the pretext of giving them rugby coaching — went missing, agency officials said here.
The CBI today carried out searches on the premises of the agents — Faridabad-based Lalit David Dean and Delhi-based Sanjeev Roy and Varun Choudhary – and seized documents, the officials said. They alleged that the agents had charged Rs 25-30 lakh each from the parents of the teenagers for sending them abroad.
In their visa application, the agents had shown that the 25 youngsters in the age group of 13-18 years were going to attend a rugby training camp in Paris, they said.
“Led by private persons (travel agents), a group of 25 students, shown as students of two Kapurthala-based schools, embarked from the Delhi airport for Paris to participate in a rugby training camp on the basis of an alleged invitation received from the French Federation, Paris,” CBI spokesperson Abhishek Dayal said.
He said all of them visited Paris and, thereafter, the students also attended a rugby training camp there for about a week.
Dayal said the agents, in the meantime, cancelled their return tickets, but before that two children, anticipating trouble, returned to India.
The minors left behind were allegedly abandoned at a gurdwara and then went missing, CBI officials said. One of them was arrested by the French police, who referred the matter to Interpol, they said, adding that the latter intimated the CBI.
Subsequently, the agency conducted a preliminary inquiry and registered an FIR. The officials said the CBI would soon contact the parents and also find out also whether any “missing person” complaint had been registered.
