E-Paper
Trafficking racket busted: Two gang members nabbed, two minor girls rescued
The arrest opened a can of worms as the accused confessed that they allegedly sold about 12-15 minor girls across other states, says DCP (south)
LUCKNOW The police on Thursday busted an inter-state human trafficking racket with the arrest of two men in Lucknow and rescued two minor girls, including one trafficked from Lucknow’s railway station and another from Rae Bareli.
Two key members of the network, Santosh Sahu alias Dabloo, 45, and Manish Bhandari alias Monu, 44, preyed on teenage and young girls on the pretext of marriage. They were nabbed from Krishna Nagar. The arrest opened a can of worms as the accused confessed that they allegedly sold about 12-15 minor girls across other states, said DCP (south) Nipun Agarwal in a presser on Thursday.
He said a 16-year-old girl from Lucknow, who had set out to Vrindavan to attend a religious discourse, had fallen into the clutches of child traffickers. The arrest was a joint operation by Krishna Nagar police and the DCP’s surveillance cell.
The accused Santosh Sahu, a native of Madhya Pradesh, used to loiter around railway stations and bus terminals identifying vulnerable, often runaway girls. “He would befriend them with false promises of marriage or employment, only to later sell them to his friend Manish Bhandari in Rajasthan for ₹50,000 who would further sell them at higher rates,” added the DCP.
According to police, the racket came to light after the father of the 16-year-old girl filed a missing person report on June 30. “The girl had set out from her home for Vrindavan without informing anyone, after which the family lodged a police complaint on June 30. A multi-team probe was launched, which tracked the digital and physical movements of the accused using CCTV footage, call records and technical surveillance,” said Agarwal.
According to ADCP (south) Amit Kumawat, Sahu confessed that he had been in contact with Bhandari since 2012 and had trafficked multiple girls over the years.
“In the most recent case, the minor girl was taken from Lucknow and transported via Kanpur to the first accused’s home in Prayagraj, where she was kept. The accused took her to MP’s Shadol district and then to Katni, where she was temporarily held and was later handed over to Bhandari. When she cried and resisted, Bhandari returned her and partially refunded the money,’’ said police.
“The police eventually rescued the girl from the Manak Nagar railway station on July 8. Another 15-year-old girl from Rae Bareli was also recovered during Sahu’s arrest,” said police.
Both the accused have a criminal history and have been to jail in Chhattisgarh under human trafficking charges where they became friends. Santosh Sahu is already booked in six serious cases involving kidnapping, rape, Pocso and trafficking across four states while Bhandari has two such cases to his name, said police.
“The police will take the accused on custody remand to dig more about their network spread across other states,” said the DCP.
