A BPO, discounted Air India tickets & unpaid dues: ‘Racket’ unravelled by Covid

When a Chandigarh-based journey agent known as Air India’s buyer care centre in February final yr to hunt readability on a Kathmandu flight he was about to e book for a passenger, he unwittingly grew to become a part of a racket that ended up in losses of over Rs 50 lakh for him and a number of others like him. The operation, which concerned reserving Air India tickets via a two-decade previous BPO firm, IGT Solutions, with out making funds to the airline ran easily till the second wave of Covid hit the nation, after which it began to unravel and are available aside on the seams.

Last February, the agent known as a Gurgaon-registered Air India buyer help quantity looking for a clarification on the identify sample for tickets he was reserving for a Kathmandu-bound flight. The Air India name centre, which is managed by IGT Solutions, assured that he’ll get a callback from one in every of their help executives. Soon, he obtained a name from an individual claiming to be an Air India consultant, serving to him together with his concern.

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Shortly after, he once more acquired a name from the identical consultant, however this time with a suggestion. “The man claimed to be from Air India and asked me how much I paid for the Kathmandu ticket. When I told him the amount, he offered me the same ticket at a significant discount of Rs 10,000 to the quoted price,” the agent mentioned. “I checked with my friends here, who are senior travel agents, and they advised me to take the offer but to make the payment only after the passenger has travelled on the said ticket,” he added.

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The alleged Air India consultant agreed to his cost phrases and issued him a ticket. The agent’s buyer travelled to Kathmandu with out trouble and he paid the cash to this particular person. “For the next 15 days, we followed this model of payment only after the trip is complete … since the person never failed, I decided to make payments at the time of booking,” the agent mentioned, including his different colleagues additionally began reserving via this particular person.

All this went on like clockwork till India acquired hit by a lethal Covid wave in May 2021, which impacted folks’s journey plans and so they began cancelling tickets. Some of the agent’s clients cancelled tickets to locations comparable to Canada, anticipating a refund. But he by no means obtained that refund to cross it on to his clients. Other journey brokers additionally discovered themselves caught on this lure. “As of date, refunds of about 60 tickets (mostly to flights to Canada) totalling Rs 52 lakh is due … and I am just one agent — there are several more,” he mentioned.

Simultaneously, Air India grew to become conscious of an accounting discrepancy in direction of the quantity it anticipated to obtain from IGT Solutions for tickets it believes had been issued by the BPO firm on the airline’s behalf. “Legitimate tickets were issued but the airline did not receive payments towards these bookings. Typically, such discrepancies arise on a rolling basis and they get settled in a few days, weeks or months. But when this particular mismatch lasted for a longer period, we approached IGT Solutions and asked them to look into it,” an Air India govt advised The Indian Express. He refused to share the overall quantity that the airline is because of obtain on account of those tickets.

IGT Solutions, on its half, has filed a primary data report (FIR) at Cyber Crime Police Station, Gurgaon, final month towards unknown individuals the place it has mentioned “multiple tickets were issued through Air India system with no payments being received by the airline, which was notified by Air India to IGT”.

“The company also looked into the bookings made using the IGT employees’ log-in ids and passwords while these employees were not even authorised, nor trained for issuing of tickets and in few instances were not in the shift at the time when fraudulent tickets were made,” learn the FIR dated May 7, which was reviewed by The Indian Express.

In the FIR, IGT Solutions mentioned after the discrepancy was found, it supplied sure IP addresses to Air India from which it offers the decision centre companies, in order that the airline can prohibit entry to all different IP addresses. “As this control was not put in place, to our utter shock, we find that few/may be many tickets have been issued without any payments,” learn the grievance filed by IGT Solutions’ Senior Manager-Fraud Investigations Manmeet Bakshi.

Multiple messages despatched to Bakshi looking for remark for this story didn’t elicit a response. IGT Solutions didn’t reply to an in depth set of queries despatched by this newspaper. IGT Solutions, was InterGlobe Technologies earlier whereas it was owned by Rahul Bhatia — the billionaire promoter of funds airline IndiGo. The name centre firm was acquired in 2019 by AION Capital — a JV between world PE fund Apollo Global Management and ICICI Ventures — in 2019 for $230 million. AION Capital is reported as more likely to promote 85 per cent stake in IGT Solutions to personal fairness main Baring PE Asia for over $800 million.

Responding to e mail queries, an Air India spokesperson denied involvement of its staff within the fraudulent ticket bookings. “We are, however, aware that M/s IGT, which looks after the contact centre for Air India, has filed an FIR against unknown persons and not against any Air India Employee. A discrepancy was observed and IGT has followed their procedure on this issue,” the spokesperson mentioned. In a follow-up question in regards to the circumstances by which the alleged fraudster may have accessed the agent’s particulars, the spokesperson mentioned: “Air India has always been having zero tolerance for any kind of malpractice or impropriety in any area of its activities…we made it quite clear that Air India is in no way addressed in the FIR, mentioned by you, and is not aware of any allegation of involvement of its own personnel in the case”.

After months of not receiving their cash, the agent and others travelled to Delhi in July final yr to confront the alleged fraudster. “He promised to refund the money. But it is still due. He has not returned to his home since July last year. My only hope is on the police investigation,” he mentioned.