Two men have been arrested in Delhi for allegedly duping the owner of a travel agency in Calcutta out of ₹22 lakh by posing as operators of a tour firm and promising to book flight tickets at low rates, police said.

The men were arrested by a team of officers from Delhi police and the Bidhannagar commissionerate a couple of days ago. The cops have identified the accused as Jatin Kalra, 34, and Kailash Rathore, 30.

Officers said Swati Jain, the owner of a travel agency that has its office in Bangur Avenue, had got in touch with a man who introduced himself as the director of B2C Holidays Pvt Ltd, a tour firm in Delhi that he said catered to travel agencies and tour operators.

“Jain was told that B2C would book flight tickets at cheap rates for her clients if she entered into an agreement with the company,” an officer said.

“The men could convince the owner of the travel agency that they were a big tour operator. They showed her photographs and videos of overseas tours that they claimed they had organised.”

Jain then started forwarding booking requests of flights of her clients to these men.

She paid the men a total of ₹22 lakh to book flight tickets to many destinations abroad, including in Europe and the US.

“As told by the men, she would send the money to multiple accounts. Initially, they had even booked tickets that were refundable. She was given booking IDs of the tickets and she verified from the booking website that those were confirmed tickets,” the officer said.

A few days later, Jain logged into the booking website again and found that all the tickets had been cancelled and the entire amount refunded.

She tried getting in touch with the men but the numbers she had were switched off.

Realising that she had been duped, Jain lodged a complaint with Lake Town police station.

“We started an investigation and mounted electronic surveillance. We found that the men were operating from Delhi and raided an office from where we arrested the two accused. We are trying to trace the money trail. Officers in Delhi said the accused had duped at least another person, a resident of Delhi, in a similar fashion,” the officer said.

All bank accounts of the two men have been frozen.