Tourist complains of harassment by local goons at Fatehpur Sikri in Agra

A tourist has complained of harassment meted out to him at the world heritage site of Fatehpur Sikri in Agra.

The complaint made at the Delhi office of Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) has been forwarded to ASI Agra office which has since passed it on to Agra district administration and police.

Superintending archaeologist for ASI Agra circle, Raj Kumar Patel confirmed that a complaint was received and forwarded to Agra police.

“The tourist had complained the matter on April 29, 2022 through e mail to ASI office in Delhi about his visit to Fatehpur Sikri wherein he was allegedly harassed by ‘lapka or local goons.’ The matter has been informed to Agra police and district administration,” Patel said.

The complainant Pinaki Kundu had said that the incident happened a month back when he was on his way to Fatehpur Sikri with his parents and child. He said their car was waylaid by some local goons who were on motorcycle, nearly 2 km before the monument. They asked him (tourist) to hire one of them for Rs. 500.

“As these people had no proper ID, I did not want to hire them. However, they didn’t allow our car to move ahead and blocked road. We had no choice but to hire one of them. At the tomb (dargah) of Salim Chisti, I was asked to buy ‘chadar’ from a person who asked for ₹3000 for it,” the tourist said in his e-mail complaint.

“When I refused to buy the ‘chadar’ at that price, the ‘guide’ challenged me and forced me and my family out of the fort. The sellers he was favouring accompanied this ‘guide’ and one of them even followed me and blocked the passage to the car as we moved towards entry of the main monument. Shocked and afraid, we gave up the idea and returned,” the complainant said.

This is not the first of its kind incident at the World heritage site of Fatehpur Sikri, a site 40 km away from city. These goons, locally termed as ‘lapka’, have brought quite a bad image of Agra amongst visitors, said a local.