Saahil Suhail
Early Times Report
KULGAM, July 13: A Consultancy based in South Kashmir's Kulgam district has allegedly duped hundreds of Khadmeen-e-hajj aspirants.
'Access Education Care consultancy' run by one Reyaz Aijaz Bhat s/o Aijaz Ahmad Bhat R/o Zazripora Kulgam has reportedly collected money from over 120 Khadmeen-e-hajj aspirants, but failed to send them to pilgrimage for volunteering their services.
"The agency has collected approximately thirty six lakh (36) of rupees from each aspirant," said Advocate Moien Ahmad, who is a resident of Sopore. The fraud, according to him, came to light when aspirants did not receive any call from the agency even after the date for the travel and other formalities were due.
He claimed that he and others submitted passport and required fee to the agency for the Khadmeen-e-hajj and visa. "However, even after the pilgrimage started, we did not even receive any call from the agency," he said.
Dozens of aspirants today held protests against the consultancy inside the premises of Mini-secretariat Kulgam and alleged that they were duped by the consultancy. The owner of the consultancy was threatening them, aspirants alleged.
"Our biggest concern and worry is that we have submitted original copies of passports and he isn't returning them back to us," they said, adding consultancy could misuse the documents of the aspirants.
They said that instead of tendering apology and returning our documents and money, the owner of consultancy and his father was threatening them on phone of dire consequences if they approached police or media.
"Consultancy owner and his father threatened us and said that he will get us killed if we visited Kulgam and brought the issue into the notice of authorities and media," they said.
During the protest demonstration aspirants produced receipts provided to them by the Access Education Care' Consultancy. They sought immediate intervention of higher officials of district and divisional administration.
Each year, Saudi authorities allot special quota to countries and specially to consultancies for hiring volunteers from every corner of the world to ensure better facilities to pilgrims during Hajj.
Earlier, many travel agencies based in Srinagar hogged newspaper headlines for duping Hajj aspirants in the Kashmir, however administration acted swiftly and not only the aspirants got their money back but also the action was taken against all those travel agencies. |
