Travel agency Indoor Air & Hotels India has been accused of providing travel advice for more than $500,000 to gay men on a single trip.
The news comes just months after the country banned gay sex in public places and banned gay men from visiting or dining at hotels for up to six months.
Indoor Air, which has been around for 20 years, said it was a “one-time event”.
“This is an incident in itself and we take it very seriously,” Indoor India Managing Director Sanjay Kaul told Business Insider.
“We have no control over the actions of other agents in the industry.
If this were to happen again, we will take swift action.”
Indoor air’s website lists four different locations where the gay man is to be served the medical advice, including hotels and hotels in the state of Karnataka, according to the news agency NDTV.
“We are not able to provide a travel advice to anyone in the Indian capital, Delhi, Mumbai, New Delhi or any other city in India,” IndoAir told Business on the condition of anonymity.
“The travel advice is only available to members of our team and is provided by a third party.”
IndoAir also declined to comment on how many gay men had been served the advice in the last six months, saying it could not comment on individual cases.
The LGBT group GLAAD called for the agency to be shut down.
“There is a growing problem of gay and transgender people being exploited for the purpose of sexual exploitation and exploitation of LGBTI people by travel agents,” the group said in a statement.
“It is a disturbing and alarming trend that suggests a systematic attempt to sell gay and trans travel experiences to LGBTQI people for profit.”
Indian travel agency Indigo India, which runs some of India’s biggest travel agencies, has been hit with several complaints in recent months.
In November, a lesbian couple from the western Indian state of Odisha were refused entry to a hotel for refusing to wear the traditional wedding dress that is reserved for heterosexual couples.
The couple was subsequently given a “notice to cease and desist” from Indigo India.
The family has now filed a complaint with the Delhi High Court.
A few months later, a transgender woman from Kerala, who was on a tour of India and had undergone sex reassignment surgery, was refused entry into a hotel in the western state of Tamil Nadu, India’s largest state.
The man, who has been referred to as ‘Guru’, was reportedly asked to leave by hotel staff.
The case is still pending.
In February, a gay couple from Kerala was refused access to a family-friendly hotel in Mumbai.
In the same month, an Indian transgender woman who was visiting New York for the first time was refused a hotel room for not wearing a traditional wedding gown for the wedding of her boyfriend.
The man, identified only as ‘Vyengar’, was refused by Indigo India in December.
“This case is also yet another case of discrimination and exploitation against a transgender person by a travel agent, as the Indian Supreme Court recently ruled that transgender people are entitled to the same dignity as everyone else,” the GLAad said.
“We call on Indigo India to take immediate steps to take steps to remove these discriminatory practices.”
Indoair’s chief executive officer and general manager, Rahul Srivastava, told Business that the travel agency was “fully committed to providing the best possible services to our clients” and that it “wouldn’t do anything that might cause any discomfort or distress to our clientele”.
Indoo Air also said it has no control on the actions or policies of the people it serves.
“In the case of this matter, the travel agent is only providing a service to the individual clients in their travel plans,” the company said in an emailed statement.
“In the event of any such situation, we would like to inform the relevant authorities of the situation and take necessary steps to rectify the situation.”
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