Delhi police bust human trafficking gang

The IGI Airport police have busted an organised human trafficking gang that was into the business of illegally sending people to America.

The Deputy Commissioner of police, IGI airport, RA Sanjeev said, the gang had been charging 25 to 30 lakh rupees per person for sending them to America.

As per the modus operandi of the gang, the agents, mainly from Punjab and Gujarat, used to lure young people, usually between the age group of 18 and 30, and assure them of safe passage to America.

The agents even used to assure the youth that in case some untoward incident takes place in America, they will provide them full legal assistance.

The gang came to light after the Customs department opened an unclaimed bag of a passenger in November last year and found 105 Indian passports.

On January 2 this year the customs lodged a complaint with the airport police in this case. During scrutiny police discovered that one of the passports belonged to Parveen Bhai Mohandas Patel, who was arrested by the police as he had travelled to India on a scanned passport.

Patel was subsequently questioned by the police and he disclosed that he was sent to Guatemala by Sawan Rajnikant Trivedi, who was into the business of sending persons to America.

Police immediately opened a 'look out circular' to all Indian airports and border check posts. On January 14, police received information that Sawan has come to India and would be meeting his three other accomplices.

Sawan had come to India from US via Hongkong and Nepal. Subsequently, Sawan and his accomplices, Guru Amrit Pal Singh, Shashi Kiran Reddy and Surjeet Kumar were arrested.

During interrogation the arrested accused told police that since there was visa on arrival in Guatemala, they used to send their clients there. In Guatemala, they would be handed over to their Mexican and Spanish counterparts, who used to escort them through dense jungles to America.

They told police that when they used to handover the clients to their Spanish and Mexican counterparts they used to collect their passports and used to bring them back to India.

Police said that these passports were handed over to the parents of their clients after receiving final payment from them. Later the parents used to currier these passports to their wards in US.