Gandhinagar: The Gujarat CID-Crime has busted a nationwide racket involving the creation of an artificial shortage of jungle safari permits and their illegal resale at inflated prices, officials said on Wednesday.
According to a statement issued by the Gandhinagar-based Cyber Centre of Excellence, two men — Ajaykumar Chaudhary and Arvind Upadhyay, both natives of Bihar — were arrested from Delhi and brought to Gujarat for further investigation.
During the probe, it was found that the accused used fake ID proofs to bulk-book online safari permits for several national parks and tiger reserves, including Gir (Gujarat), Ranthambore (Rajasthan), Tadoba-Andhari (Maharashtra), Jim Corbett (Uttarakhand), Kaziranga (Assam), and Bandhavgarh (Madhya Pradesh).
Officials said the duo’s actions created an artificial scarcity, preventing genuine tourists from accessing permits. They then sold these permits to travel agents, who offered them to tourists at exorbitant prices.
Investigators also discovered that the accused had set up a fake website mimicking the official portal to dupe unsuspecting visitors and sell illegally obtained permits.
The CID-Crime said the accused had sold nearly 12,000 permits of Gir Jungle Safari alone, and investigators recovered about 8,600 payment confirmation emails from their computer systems.
Authorities are now tracking the financial trail to identify other accomplices and travel agents involved in the racket.
