Owners of a travel agency and two coaching centres have vanished after duping people of crores of rupees here, police said.
MM Marketing, a travel agency, collected Rs 1 crore by charging Rs 5,000 per person for a trip to Shirdi and back, before disappearing six months ago. It had promised its customers forward journey by flight while the return journey would have been on train.
The tour operator collected money from people of Ganjam, Khurda, Puri, Gajapati and Kandhamal districts. "We have sealed their office and registered a cheating case against some of its members. They are on the run," said IIC of Town police station A K Mishra.
Similarly, a coaching centre that had collected an advance fee of Rs 1 lakh per student for two years to prepare them for JEE has gone missing since the last year.
Claiming to be a Chennai-based coaching centre, it had run for two years to gain confidence of people. Their tutors, also outsiders, are also nowhere to be seen, said a doctor, who was victimised.
"After five months of depositing the fee for two of my children, the institute vanished one fine morning. The owner of the premises also did not tell me about them," the doctor said.
"We have approached police for action against the coaching centre owner," he said.
Another such institute operating in Hillpatna downed its shutter suddenly last year, sources said, adding investigation is on.
