Travel agents in blame game
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Travel agents Francis Xavier and Prashanth Chowdhary of Assets Tours and Travels, who were responsible for stranding 64 pilgrims in Egypt en route to the Holy Land of Jerusalem, were arrested by the North Zone police on Friday. The duo blamed each other for the fiasco when they were produced before the media.
According to the police, Francis Xavier was scheduled to lead a team of 49 pilgrims, while Prashanth was supposed to assist a group of 16. However, Francis decided to stay back at the last minute. When he opted out of the tour, he did not hand over any money for expenses for the tour, said the police.
“He gave them $9,000 (about Rs 4 lakh), given to him by one of the pilgrim’s relatives to convert it into dollars for personal use, though each pilgrim had paid Rs 65,000 for the tour,” North Zone DCP Srikanth said.
Meanwhile, Prashanth blamed Francis for keeping all the money with him, while he was forced to spend the money of 16 people on 64 members.
Many of the pilgrims did not have valid visas. Francis said he believed that Prashanth had procured visas for everybody.
However, police said it was the liability of the tour operators to ensure all the pilgrims had valid visas before taking them on tour. But, neither of the agents had bothered to apply for visas even though they had enough time to apply, the police maintained.
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