26 more women rescued from Roop Nagar, Mahipalpur flats

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Wednesday arrested two more people — a 52-year-old Nepalese citizen and his 34-year-old woman aide — for trafficking women, mostly from

NEW DELHI: Delhi Police on Wednesday arrested two more people — a 52-year-old Nepalese citizen and his 34-year-old woman aide — for trafficking women, mostly from Nepal, and sending them to west Asian countries.

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Twenty-six women, including 10 Indians, were found confined in two flats in north Delhi and Mahipalpur and rescued by the police.

Police said the duo promised jobs to women in the Gulf countries on employment visa and forcibly sent them to Sri Lanka on a tourist visa. From Sri Lanka they arranged employment visas for them. The two allegedly confined the women in Delhi if they refused to give more money for their travel to Sri Lanka.

Joint commissioner of police (crime) RS Yadav said that on September 1, two Nepali women approached the crime branch with a complaint alleging that they had been locked up by a woman on the pretext of helping them obtain travel documents to Gulf countries.

According to Yadav, the duo had been brought to the capital from Nepal by Ramu Chaudhary and Shabin Shah, both Nepalese citizens. Once in Delhi, their passports were seized and their movement restricted. The two said they were confined for more than 10 days but managed to escape on September 1.

“We conducted a raid at the house in Mahipalpur and rescued 20 women. On September 3, we arrested the owner of the house, a woman named Bidya Lama,” said Yadav.

Lama’s interrogation led to the arrest of the kingpin Shabin Shah, 52, from his house in Roop Nagar. At Shah’s house, police rescued four more women.

Police said Shah had been involved in trafficking women since 2011. He told police that till date, he has sent around 1,500 women from India and Nepal to the Gulf countries

The rescued women have alleged that once they reached Delhi, they were kept in a dark room and were told that they would be sent to Dubai via Colombo. “They first sent the women to Sri Lanka in order to get past the strict immigration rules for employment visas to the Gulf countries. They extorted the women. Even after getting jobs, the agents took away half the salary,” said an officer.

Police said Shabin Shah, is wanted by the Nepal police also.