Rajkot: In a major cyberfraud crackdown, Mendarda police arrested a 23-year-old school dropout from Rajasthan for running a fake online booking platform for rooms and government safaris at Gir National Park.

The accused, Rashid Khan Ayub Khan, allegedly posed as an authorised agent and cheated tourists from several states and abroad. The case was filed in November after a Range Forest Officer reported that visitors booking accommodation at Sinh Sadan and official lion safaris were being redirected to a bogus website.

Junagadh SP Subodh Odedra said a technical team traced the fake portal’s digital trail to Deeg, Rajasthan, monitoring online activity, phone numbers and money trails to locate the accused. Preliminary findings show he used WhatsApp calls to avoid detection and operated through a bank account already linked to around 20 cyberfraud complaints. Victims included people from Vadodara, UP, Maharashtra, Delhi, Telangana, Haryana and other states.

Police found that Rashid had created several other fraudulent sites mimicking pages of Jagannath Temple, Shri Ram Ashram and various hotels to collect payments. Though a school dropout, he had taught himself web design and ran a small institute called TECHDO, training others.

He allegedly used forged websites, fake WhatsApp numbers and rented bank accounts to issue bogus receipts, hiding his activities in the remote terrain of his village. Rashid Khan has been remanded to five days’ police custody. DeshGujarat