Hyderabad:14-yr-old girl rescued from clutches of traffickers

Balapur: In today's time the human race has reached Mars leaving the Moon behind and in such times, we still have people who are willing to sell their daughters for a few lakh just to get rid of their poverty. Irony is not the poverty, but the rich who are still willing to buy a girl.

In one incident, which has shocked the entire city, a family from Balapur had agreed to sell their 14-year-old minor girl to a businessman in Mumbai only for Rs 3 lakh and that too in the guise of marrying the minor girl. The Balapur police on Monday arrested 9 persons who were trying to sell the minor girl. The main accused were Syed Altaf Ali (61) (the buyer), Akhil Ahmed, Zareena Begum, Shabana Begum, Nasreen Begum, Zaheda Bee, Asra Begum (mother) and Chand Sultana (grandmother).

B Srikanth, Balapur Sub-Inspector said, "I got a tip-off about the minor girl being sold to a person from Mumbai. Upon receiving information, I informed my senior officers and after obtaining permission we informed the SHE teams and raided the house in Bilal Colony, Errakunta, Balapur and found that all the arrested persons were in the house brokering the deal for selling the girl." Initially, the arrested persons said that it was their family matter and tried to evade our questions, but when we confronted them to reveal the truth, the girl's mother confessed that she was selling her daughter to Syed for Rs 3 lakh. The reason for selling the minor girl was due to poverty and she also confessed that they tried to sell the girl three months ago to the same Syed, but the deal did not finalise as he was not ready to pay the demanded amount.

However, a few days ago, Asra Begum's brother met with an accident and in order to avail money for treatment, they again contacted Akhil Ahmed who is a friend of Altaf. This time Altaf agreed to pay Rs 3 lakh for the girl and all the accused persons agreed to it and also agreed that they will make the deal to look like a marriage. But in reality, she was being sold off without any marriage, said the officer.

He added, "Based on their confessions, all the accused were arrested under sections 370, 370 (A), r/w 11 of IPC and section 17 of POCSO Act and sections 3 and 5 of Immoral trafficking act and were remanded to judicial custody."