The Directorate of Enforcement (ED), Jalandhar Zonal Office, has arrested Delhi-based ticketing agent Tarun Khosla in the 'Dunkey Route' money-laundering case, the agency said in a statement reported on Tuesday, October 27. Khosla was arrested on October 23 under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002, and has been sent to ED custody till October 30 by a Special PMLA Court.
Source: hi INDiA (IANS, reporting the ED statement)
The case relates to Indians who were deported from the US in February 2025 after allegedly entering the country illegally through the Mexico border. The ED investigation was initiated on the basis of various FIRs registered by Punjab Police and Haryana Police under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 and the Emigration Act, 1983, after more than 300 Indian nationals were deported.
What the ED alleges Khosla did
According to the ED, Khosla was a key facilitator of the Dunkey Route network. The agency alleges he worked with multiple agents from Punjab and Haryana who collected passports and money from people wishing to go to the US and handed them over to him in Delhi. He then allegedly arranged visas and air tickets to transit countries in South America such as Guyana, Suriname, Ecuador and El Salvador, and facilitated their onward movement towards the US border using illegal and dangerous routes. The ED says he was a key decision-maker on routes and pricing for each person. These are the agency's allegations, which Khosla has not been convicted of.
The ED probe alleges that people wishing to go to the US were induced by agents and middlemen on the false promise of being sent through legal channels, and were instead sent through the Dunkey Route on payment of Rs 30 lakh to Rs 60 lakh each — yaani, thirty to sixty lakh rupees per person.
Earlier searches in the case were conducted on July 9 and 11, 2025 at 19 locations, where the ED says incriminating documents, records and digital devices were recovered, including bogus immigration and visa stamps relating to Nicaragua and Ethiopia. On December 15, the ED provisionally attached movable and immovable properties worth Rs 5.41 crore, and in searches on December 18 and 19, 2025 across Punjab, Haryana and Delhi, it says cash of Rs 4.62 crore, gold bars and coins weighing about 5.9 kg and silver bars weighing about 313 kg, together valued at Rs 19.14 crore, were seized from Khosla's premises, along with more than 50 original passports of third parties from other premises.
Source: Inventiva (ED arrest report)
The agency further alleges that data from Khosla's mobile phones showed chats indicating he acted as an 'immigration-clearance fixer', coordinating with foreign contacts, handling tickets and payments in dollars, and that cash deposits of Rs 30.38 crore through 414 cash-credit transactions were found in the bank account of his proprietorship firm, BJ International, between FY 2022-23 and FY 2024-25. The investigation is continuing, the ED said.