Dosanjh’s show, part of his ‘Dil-Luminati Tour’, is scheduled to be held at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. | Photo Credit: file photo
With ‘ticket scalping’ the term of the season thus far after the frenzy over British rock band Coldplay’s three concerts in Mumbai and performances by rapper Karan Aujla and Punjabi singer Diljit Dosanjh, 29-year-old Kaushik Raj decided to do one better.
The freelance event manager made a killing selling fake tickets of Dosanjh’s show scheduled to be held at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium on October 26, part of his “Dil-Luminati Tour”.
The earnings went promptly into acquiring an Apple iPhone for ₹1,35,000 and Apple Watch for ₹50,000, and splurging at clubs and hotels in Bengaluru, Goa and Mumbai – until the law caught up with him.
Police said on Tuesday that they arrested Kaushik from the Nizamuddin railway station in Delhi on a complaint from a victim in Neb Sarai.
The FIR states that the complainant, desperately seeking to attend the Delhi concert, got Kaushik’s number from a friend in Chandigarh.
Kaushik assured him of tickets, sending the first lot of five over e-mail.
“The complainant then decided to purchase tickets for his family and friends, and until September 11 had purchased a total of 69 tickets of different categories amounting ₹4,76,870. But when he called the helpline of Paytm Insider, the authorised seller for the concert, to verify the tickets, he was told that the tickets were fake,” said a police officer.
“Kaushik used to edit concert tickets and sell them. He cheated two other residents from Chandigarh and West Bengal and finally switched off his phone,” the officer said.
The police finally nabbed the accused on Monday from Nizamuddin railway station.
Upon interrogation, Kaushik, a native of Bihar’s Muzaffarpur, revealed that he dropped out of B.Tech from an engineering college in Greater Noida in 2011 and has been freelancing in event management thereafter.
Published – October 16, 2024 01:38 am IST
