'Human trafficking' racket: 14 Punjabis land in UK without valid visa, seek asylum

Police have registered a case of human trafficking against unidentified people after 14 Indian nationals hailing from Punĵab left the Amritsar airport and landed in the UK without holding a valid visa and sought asylum there on January 11.

"It seems a case of human trafficking, in which employees of Air India at the Amritsar airport are involved. Further, there is likelihood of involvement of travel agents, who booked tickets of these passengers. Given the scale of the operation, a police investigation may be able to unearth the network," reads the FIR.

Jadwinder Singh, Gursewak Singh, Navjot Singh Aulakh, Ravinder Pal Singh Randhawa, Harwinder Singh Dhaliwal, Inderjeet Singh, Harbans Singh, Yuvraj Singh, Arshdeep Singh, Kiranpreet Kaur, Navjot Singh, Amandeep Singh, Harmanjot Singh and Mandeep Singh booked their tickets through various travel agents, including one ‘Travel Boutique Online’, 728, GF, Udyog Vihar Phase V, Gurugram, a prominent B2B travel distribution platform.

Travel agents including Lords Travel Pvt Ltd, 74, Tolstoy Lane, Janpath, New Delhi, and others from Gurugram, Mumbai and Paharganj, Delhi, facilitated their travel. In 10 of the 14 cases, a particular mobile number was used for personal details of the passengers.

A case under Section 143 (3) of the BNS and the Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act, 2012, has been registered at the Punjab State Crime Police Station, Phase 4, here on April 21 after an input to unearth the human trafficking racket was received from Joint Director, Subsidiary Intelligence Bureau, Union Ministry of Home Affairs.

Enquiries from ‘Travel Boutique Online’ revealed that one ‘Sardarsons Travels’, Master Colony, Jamalpur, Ludhiana, had requested for booking tickets of two passengers.