22 Indian teens go missing in France,CBI files complaint

New Delhi, Dec 30: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered an FIR after 22 teenagers from Punjab, Haryana, and Delhi - illegally taken to France by three travel agents last year on the pretext of giving them rugby coaching went missing, agency officials said here.

The agency on Friday carried out searches at the premises of the travel agents- Faridabad-based Lalit David Dean and Delhi-based Sanjeev Roy and Varun Choudhary - from where documents were seized, they said.

The officials alleged that the agents had charged Rs 25-30 lakh from the parents of each of the minors for sending them abroad.

In their visa application, the agents had shown that the 25 children in the age group of 13-18 years were going to attend a rugby training camp in Paris, they said.

The minors left behind were allegedly abandoned at a gurdwara and then went missing, CBI officials said. One of them was arrested by the French police, who referred the matter to Interpol, they said, adding that the latter intimated the CBI.

Subsequently, the agency conducted a preliminary inquiry and registered an FIR.

The officials said the CBI would soon contact the parents and also find out also whether any "missing person" complaint had been registered.