Police bust human trafficking gangs

Hyderabad: Cyberabad police busted two human trafficking gangs and arrested 18 persons on Tuesday. The arrested included a police constable, two employees of airlines and 15 travel agents.The police said a total of 250 passports, fake VISAs, 38 Cell phones, 160 police verification certificates, six computer systems, five laptops, two printers, cash of Rs 5,02,430 and also other incriminating material was seized from the arrested.

The gangs are identified as Manikantha gang, which included T Kanteswara alias Manikantha (28), main organiser, P Surender (27), M Narsimha (23), A Anil Kumar (23), P Yugender (23), L Vinay Kumar (30) and P Venkata Subba Rayudu (51) and Pushpa gang, which comprised G Sasi alias Satya Venkata Pushpavathi (28), main organiser, Ch Sai Ram Kumar (26), Shaik Akram (36), P Srikar (33), A Balakrishna (32), Shaik Kadhar Basha (34), P Ramakrishna (36) and M Venkata Vijaya Bhaskar Reddy (42). Two airlines employees, Mohammed Mujeeb Khan (30), a team leader at Gulf Airlines at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport, A Ram Linga Reddy (35), who in the past worked as security coordinator at Oman Air and police constable G Madhu of Chevella police station.

According to Cyberabad Commissioner V C Sajjanar, unlicensed travel agents had used illegal methods in trafficking women. The original job visa or three-month work permit papers were used to prepare photo copies to show as if they were one-month visit visa. With the help of photoshop software, a visit visa was created by incorporating details of a woman passenger. The agents used to remove the original visa stamping stickers by heating them with an iron box.

Police Commissioner also said the passengers under the instruction of the travel agents used to produce fake visit visa at emigration counter. The passengers were allowed to go ahead as serial number and details of them were tallied with those in the official website.

The workers used to hide their original documents at the time of boarding the flight. They used to tear the fake visas after boarding the flight, the Police Commissioner said. The travel agents were found to be operating from all major airports like Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and other airports including RGI Airport, Shamshabad. The illegal agents used to take the passengers, who were declared medically unfit, to Sri Lanka and from there they were being smuggled to Kuwait on work visa, he said.

The gangs had established a network of agents from village level to State level. They were luring the innocent persons by assuring them work abroad. The agents were collecting Rs 1 lakh from each one interested in going abroad. They were operating from different cities like Bengaluru, Goa, Chennai, Hyderabad and States of Tamil Nadu, Kerala and Maharashtra etc.

Police Commissioner also requested public to refer Indian government website www.emigrate.gov.in to know the details of registered agents and submit applications via online only to Protector of Immigrants Office at Nampally and visit abroad on the visa issued by the government and not on fake visas provided by the illegal agents.