Yesterday, I got a mail from one of my friends about new fraud strategy at Shamshabad airport, Hyderabad. I am putting it here to bring in your kind notice and also to save you from such cheaters.

About 4-5 days back, my friend went to the Shamshabad airport to pick up his dad. As usual the drive in the morning was pleasing and the approach to the airport fascinating. But to his utter surprise as soon as he was about to take his car in the arrivals section, he was stopped by the security guard who was posted at a blockage barricade just before the fork between the roads leading to the arrivals and the departure alleys of the airport. To his surprise he was instructed to turn right and go via a rounding road along the parking lot. Unsuspecting, and believing that this was probably just a diversion for some maintenance work, he complied, just to reach his second surprise.

As he made the right and moved forward he was greeted by the parking ticket machine. Now slightly confused (and in a hurry to pick up his father) he took the ticket and entered the rounding road leading to the arrivals bay. Just as he was about to leave the parking lot, he was stopped at the parking payment plaza and asked for 30/-. That is the time things became clear to him of how he was being duped. On arguing with the booth person over how he was instructed by the guard to take the diversion and now he was being forced to pay for the parking which he never used, a simple explanation given to him was that it is not in their hands as a ticket has been issued and the price for it is 30/-. Things got really bad and he was really infuriated. After much hustle and after standing there for about 15 min. and arguing, he blew them off, paid the money and went straight to the airport authority (GMR) counter.

Now is when the interesting thing happened. he was told by the concerned people that there is not supposed to be any such barricade, and everybody is free to bring their cars in the arrival bays, without any diversions. That is when he totally lost it, he really shouted at the people, filed a complaint and even threatened them of filing an RTI case against them. That is when they apologized and assured him that action would be taken.

So he would like to request everybody who is visiting to the airport to be very careful and not be cheated by the damn security guards or the parking people. They DO NOT have any authority to stop you from entering the arrivals bay. Make sure you pass this information to anybody you know who might be visiting the airport and who might be currently being cheated out of their money.

I hope we are able to bring the culprits to justice.

PS: Thanks Salil, Manish to share it.