SIT to open history sheets of offenders
Parveen Arora
Tribune News Service
Karnal, February 11
A Special Investigation Team (SIT), which was formed to zero in on illegal immigration agents across the state, has initiated the process of opening the history sheets of those arrested in human trafficking and extortion cases to break the network of fraudsters.
In the last eight months, 453 persons have been arrested in 452 cases of immigration fraud and human trafficking by the SIT. Although most of the kingpins have been arrested, those who have gone underground are also not operating freely as they used to prior to the formation of the SIT.
Bharti Arora, IGP, Karnal Range, and SIT in-charge, said so far, the history sheets of 15 habitual offenders had been opened. The SIT was constituted by state Home Minister Anil Vij after the US government deported youths amid the pandemic in May.
The police had registered 393 such cases in 2020. As many as 195 FIRs were registered in Karnal alone — the highest in the state — and 150 persons were arrested. In Ambala, 49 persons were arrested in 96 cases while 91 in Kurukshetra. Fifty six arrests were made in Kaithal, 30 in Panipat, nine in Yamunanagar and four in Sonepat. An amount of Rs 1.22 crore was recovered from the fraudsters, said the IGP.
She said the fraudsters used three routes to provide illegal entry to youths to the US. One route was adopted via Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Mexico; the second was via Malaysia and Mexico and the third route was via Thailand, Japan and Mexico.
