Identity of trafficking kingpins not known, Punjab cops hold raids in 3 states

Tribune News Service

Aparna Banerji

Jalandhar, June 14

Even as FIRs have been registered and a number of women agents arrested in the state for alleged trafficking of women to the Gulf, kingpins or employers of these women operating sophisticated trafficking rings continue to elude the police.

Commission Rs 50K to Rs 1 lakh

Women booked or arrested so far were working for a commission of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh. We are tracking 19 more agents. Our teams have carried out raids in Hyderabad, Odisha and Delhi. Kaustubh Sharma, ig

Agents in Hyderabad, an employee of a manpower consultancy in Delhi and a bustling army of women agents — willing to push neighbours, friends and even relatives to seedy jobs in the Gulf — have so far popped up in the probe by the Punjab Police into the trafficking rings being run from Punjab.

However, the women figuring in the FIRs registered in the state (in 18 FIRs, seven women and a man have been arrested) are all commission agents, who were trafficking women to “handlers” in the Gulf.

Handlers’ identity a mystery too

• The identity of the handlers of trafficking rings remains a mystery
• The police say they are working on leads found during the probe

The identity of these handlers or their employers remains a mystery even though the police said they were working on leads on the basis of some contact numbers and names that had popped up in the probe.

Some women reported that they were kept in offices (with reception desks) in high-rises in the Gulf and transported in a fleet of vehicles by owners. The police have prepared a list of 19 more agents in connection with the trafficking cases.

The nodal officer for the investigation, Kaustubh Sharma, IG, said, “The women booked or arrested so far were all working for a commission of Rs 50,000 to Rs 1 lakh. Some of them were formerly themselves working as housemaids.

We are tracking 19 more agents. Our teams have carried out raids in Hyderabad, Odisha and Delhi.” Gurbir Singh Sandhu, CEO, Sun Foundation, said, “The women agents are the tentacles of the octopus operating this business. They lure women on rosy dreams and sell them hell instead.” In eight FIRs in Doaba (three in Jalandhar, four in Hoshiarpur and one in Nawanshahr), 13 people have been booked and two arrested.

Of those booked, 10 are women, two men while the identity of one is unknown.In at least two cases, Dubai and Oman-based women agents’ brothers and mothers aided them in their “trafficking” business from their villages.

In Jalandhar, agents Sonia, Mamta and Parveen were booked. Parveen is still at large. At least four of the women agents booked in Doaba are abroad. In Hoshiarpur, agents Navjot Kaur, Usha Rani and Raman were booked, but none arrested.

Both Navjot Kaur (in Oman) and Usha Rani (in Dubai) operate from the Gulf. Navjot’s mother Ninder Kaur and brother Ravi and Usha’s mother Geeta Rani and brother Ballu lure victims from villages in Hoshiarpur. Two agents booked in a Tarn Taran case are Hyderabad-based Shahida and her son Ganesh.

The name of a Delhi-based employee, Subhash Kumar, has also figured in a Zira FIR. A hunt is on for another Hyderabad agent in a Ferozepur case.

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