4 months on, infant trafficking kingpin held in Punjab

A four-and-half-month long manhunt for a key accused in an interstate infant trafficking case ended in Punjab with the arrest of kingpin Pargat Singh, alias Laddi, from Muktsar. The Bahadurgarh Police also arrested another accused, Mukhpal Singh, alias Mukkha, in the operation.

Bahadurgarh’s Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Mayank Mishra said Pargat Singh was one of the main operatives of the trafficking network and had managed to escape during a police operation on March 31. His sister-in-law, Baljinder Kaur, alias Babbu, had also been found involved in the procurement and sale of infants.

“The network is involved in the procurement and sale of over 50 infants and has links spanning over 10 states, from Punjab to Maharashtra. A reward of Rs 5,000 was announced for information leading to Pargat Singh’s arrest. It took more than four and half months to track him down as he frequently changed his location to evade the arrest. During this period, several raids were conducted at his suspected hideouts in Punjab and other states,” Mishra added.

The DCP further stated that the accused ran the network in a highly organised manner, with several family members assisting him in different roles. Pargat projected himself as the head of an organisation involved in child adoption and used this identity to build a network of commission-based agents.

“The agents were assigned specific roles and were deliberately kept unaware of the entire operation. They were given 5-10 per cent commission of the transaction value of an infant, with payments made entirely in cash. Pargat maintained direct contact with parents for procuring infants, while separate agents were used for different stages of the operation. This compartmentalised structure was apparently intended to ensure that no single agent had complete knowledge of any case, thereby helping the network conceal its activities,” said the DCP.

Mishra said both the accused had been taken on eight-day police remand and were being interrogated to identify other members of the network and unravel the entire chain from the procurement of newborns to their transfer and sale, while also identifying every individual who played a role in the operation.

He informed the latest arrests have taken the total number of accused arrested in the case to 23.