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Police crack down on human traffickers

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Pankaj Borthakur, Guwahati (June 12): Seven Sisters Post

Police have launched a massive operation against a gang of human traffickers in Lower Assam on Tuesday suspected to be involved with a  big trafficking network that is being conducted from Delhi for long period of time.

This follows the rescue of four minors and a youth from the Rangiya railway station on Monday. Meanwhile, after the rescue on Monday, the police arrested prime accused Alom Gir Ali from the Rangiya railway station and produced before a local court on Tuesday. Alom is a resident of Siwan district of Bihar.

“The court of judicial magistrate remanded him for four days of police custody for further investigation of the case,”said Himangsu Das, officer- in-charge of Rangiya police station. Acting on a tip-off, the police rescued 14-year-old Gwdow Brahma and three other minor boys just as they were about to start their journey to Delhi by a train from Rangiya. The rescued minors said they were promised lucrative jobs in Delhi-based industries by some other men, who took them from their native districts like Sonitpur, Goalpara, kamrup and Kokrajhar to Rangiya railway station.

During police interrogation, Alom confessed that he got Rs3,000 from a Delhi-based firm for handing over boys from Assam, while the “local middlemen” got Rs500 against each boy from bringing them to the railway station. “We are yet to nab the local traffickers in this case. Further investigation is on,” added Das.

The busting of the network in Rangiya has once brought to the fore the issue of illegal human trafficking that has become rampant in many parts of the state. Although the minors are usually taken to metros with the promise of good jobs, they usually end up as beggars or domestic helps in states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Hariyana.

In February this year, a team of Assam Police rescued a trafficked girl of Nalbari from the house of a Noidabased engineer. Nineteen-year-old Deepamoni, who was allegedly trafficked from a remote village of Nalbari, alleged that she was brutally assaulted by her employers whenever she requested them to release her. Further, few months ago, a joint investigation by the Assam Police and their Delhi counterparts brought to light the involvement of as many as 36 Delhi-based placement agencies in trafficking children, especially girls, from Assam to Haryana, Punjab, Mumbai and other metropolitan cities.

The police learnt that the middlemen involved in the trafficking network earned huge amounts of money simply by transporting boys and girls from Assam to Delhi, a fact completely unknown to most of the victims and their kin.

Submitting a list of 36 placement agencies to the Delhi Police, Assam Police’s CID had already rescued many girls from the placement agencies located at Rajouri Garden, Raghubir Nagar, Uttam Nagar, Kalkaji and several other areas in New Delhi. “While the trafficked children mostly end up as domestic helps and in fish packaging industries, the beautiful girls are forced to marry some Haryanvi or Punjabi men. A lot of such examples are with us,” said child rights activist Rishi Kant, who is also associated with Shakti Vahini, a New Delhi-based NGO. Many instances of selling of Assam girls to some suburban brothels in Delhi and Mumbai have also come to light, the police said.

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