Mangaluru: Over 90 people who had planned to undertake the Haj pilgrimage have been taken for a ride by a city travel agency.
The incident came to light only after M P Moideenabba, a resident of Udupi having fallen victim to the fake promises of the travel agency came forward to file a police complaint on Friday August 25.
The complainant has alleged that the agency, Shahada Travels had collected money from him and several other gullible Haj aspirants after promising to take care of all the visa formalities related to their pilgrimage.
A sum of around Rs 70,000 had been given to the agency in two installments on June 21 and on August 16, he stated. Despite this the agency had failed to give him the visa on time and kept on asking him to wait citing unavoidable circumstances. Finally on August 21 he was informed that his visa did not get approval from the concerned authorities.
On speaking to few other Haj aspirants Moideenabba came to know that he was not the sole victim of the fake promises by the agency but several others too had been duped of their money on promises of arranging visa for the pilgrimage this year.
