Chennai: It all started with a Facebook friend introducing R. Pushparaj of Chennai to an agent in Cambodia who gave him a fake Canadian visa, job offer after extracting US $ 10,000 ('6.5 lakh) from him in installments.
After struggling in Phnom Penh for nearly three months hoping to board a flight to Canada, Pushparaj had to return empty-handed, as the agent, a TN man, washed his hands of the matter.
The agent had cited ‘Trump’s anti-Canada rhetoric’ for job scarcity in Canada. Back home, Chennai police ‘advised’ Pushparaj to go back to Cambo-dia to register his complaint.
“It was Suresh, one of my FB friends, who gave me details of the agent Arun Kumar believed to be a native of Puducherry based in Cambodia. Suresh told me in WhatsApp calls that he was staying in Cambodia for a few weeks and Arun Kumar managed to get him work permit and visa for Canada. Later he said he was calling from Canada and said that he was working happily there,” Pushparaj told this newspaper, while explaining about the ordeal he faced while chasing his ‘job in Canada’ dream.
A native of Salem, Pushparaj after completing his degree and PG, had worked in Singapore for more than six years before returning to India. He was not happy with the Indian work atmosphere and decided to look for jobs abroad again only to land in Cambodia. He strongly believes that his FB friend and Arun were hand in glove to cheat him.
“Arun said that US President was sending back all Canadians to their native country and it resulted in job shortage in Canada. So he asked me to return to India and I came back in February end after spending three months there. After that he started blocking my WhatsApp calls. La-ter, when made enquiries with Canadian diplomatic mission, I found that visa and job permit letter were fake,” Pushparaj said.
Frustrated over the money loss and cheating, he wrote to Canadian PM, Indian mission in Canada and Cambodia and CBI. Canadian PM’s office wrote back telling him to contact a website. Though CBI does not probe individual complaints it forwarded his complaint to the Chennai police.
Ten days ago Pushparaj got a call from Chennai CCB, job racket sub inspector Devaraj saying he wanted to conduct an enquiry. “I had all the contacts of Arun Kumar, even his passport details. But it loo-ked like Devaraj wanted to close the complaint and he wanted me to write a letter saying that I would go back to Cambodia and lodge complaint there because cheating happened there,” Pushparaj said.
When contacted, the officer said that ‘despite limitations, he was trying to locate call details of the suspect’.
