Delhi man held for duping people through fake travel website

New Delhi, July 30 (IANS) A 33-year-old man was arrested for creating a fake travel website through which he duped people on the pretext of flight bookings, police said on Saturday.

Aviral Rawal, who is a resident of Delhi's Dwarka area, was even using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) techniques to get the fraudulent website pushed up in Google search.

Deputy Commissioner of Police, IFSO-Special Cell, K.P.S. Malhotra said that they had received a complaint that a fraudulent website called www.travolook.in was cheating people on the pretext of booking flights.

"The complaint was taken up and a case under appropriate sections of law was registered," the DCP said.

During the course of investigation, the technical analysis of the domain was undertaken and the same was superimposed with the financial trail. Through the analysis of the victim's bank accounts, the police found that transactions were credited to the account of Wing In Travel Advisory Pvt Ltd.

"Further through the financial trail, it was found that the alleged persons were using the facility of Google Search Engine Optimisation and their website was being displayed on top of the search results," the DCP said.

Through technical enquiry, digital footprints and manual surveillance were obtained. The police then identified the accused person, and zeroed down his location in Gurugram. "A raid was conducted and the accused Aviral Rawal was arrested," Malhotra said.

During sustained interrogation, Rawal disclosed that in 2017, he started his own company in the name of Wing In Travel Advisory. He purchased a domain of Travolook.in and started cheating the public on the pretext of providing discounted tickets.

"After receiving the money, he used to mail the customers that the ticket could not be processed and the money would be refunded within 4-5 working days, but he never refunded money to anyone," said the official.