Guntur man who tricked air passengers into buying his flight tickets arrested

Hyderabad: A 21-year-old from Guntur district in Andhra Pardesh was arrested on 6 November for cheating several air passengers. Madela Venkata Dinesh Kumar, a frequent flyer, tricked them into buying his flight tickets.

The CISF personnel arrested Dinesh at the Rajiv Gandhi International Airport in Hyderabad on Friday. He arrived from Mumbai and was set to fly to Bengaluru by another flight. He was handed over to the airport police. A fake identity card of Lovely Professional University and an NCC card was recovered from his possession.

Though Dinesh had been cheating passengers for the past few months and flying on tickets paid by others, he was nabbed at Hyderabad following a complaint from Dr. Shyju of Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

Dr. Shyju, in the complaint filed with airport authorities, said Dinesh had cheated him to the tune of Rs. 10,000 after making him pay for his flight tickets more than a month ago. He promised to return the amount but stopped responding to his calls.

In August, Dinesh had been arrested in Bengaluru after cheating a passenger who had paid for his tickets.

The police found that Dinesh loitered in the airport departure area and approached flyers. He identified himself as a student flying with his friends and told them that he had missed the flight. Citing an emergency, he would request passengers to pay for his flight. The police also found that he had cheated several people in the same way but many of them did not report it to the police.