"Athithi Devo Bhawa (Guest is God)" continues...

Sometime in late 2001, my friend David Jones, then a senior detective at the Anti-Kidnap Unit of the New Scotland Yard of United Kingdom, apprised me on telephone of several complaints that had reached his desk from different Commonwealth and European countries giving vivid accounts of how young low-budget tourists—mainly white young girls—had fallen prey to unscrupulous criminals during their visit to Jaipur, Delhi and Agra—the so called ‘golden circuit of tourism’ in north India. They were all victims of cheating, forgery, robbery, abduction, extortion, molestation and even rape. On my request, Detective Jones forwarded a bunch of complaints and documents received from citizens of U.K., Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany etc who had suffered, more or less, in a similar manner during their trips to India.

I was then posted as Joint Director, Economic Offences Wing of the CBI. I asked my DIG BK Sharma to identify a competent team to carry out an analysis of the documents received. DSP VK Shukla under SP HC Awasthy assisted by Inspector Ajay Bassi was deputed for the job. A common modus operandi adopted by the miscreants to dupe young tourists, mostly white girls, emerged on examining the documents: Members of a well-organized gang would spot their potential victims among foreign tourists at Railway Stations or Bus Stands with the help of autorickshaw or taxi drivers, who would drive them to pre-determined lodging houses or budget hotels. The same auto-rickshaw or taxi driver would offer to take them sight-seeing as per their (tourists’) convenience. Needless to say, the cabbies and auto drivers would get a hefty commission for their services by the gang leaders. After sight-seeing or, sometimes even before it, they would bring the tourists to jewellery shops run by members of the same gang. The shopkeeper would propose to them to that if they did as they were told, they could make big and easy money. The proposal
was the tourists buy jewellery or precious stones from their shop and send them to
their (tourists’) own addresses back home.

To be continued...