Bengaluru Police bust international child trafficking racket, 16 arrested

The Bengaluru Police have busted a major child trafficking racket in which 25 children (boys and girls under the age of 10) were sent to the US under false identities in the last one year. The kids were either handed over to their parents who are living in the US as illegal migrants or to child-trafficking gangs.

Cops have arrested 16 people, including, three women on Monday in connection with the racket, which spreads across Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The police managed to nab Uday Rudra Pratap Singh (44), the kingpin of the racket, from his home in Bengaluru.

Gang members would pose as couples and travel to the US with a child pretending to be the parents. Once they reached the US, the child would be handed over to local contacts and the 'couple' would return to India. The whereabouts of the 25-30 kids, who were abducted or taken with the consent of their grandparents from Gujarat, Bihar, UP and Karnataka, are not known so far.

In addition to Uday Prathap Singh, the police have arrested Michael (37), Rajesh (43), Simon (36), Kushalappa (34), Gunashekar (42), Dominic Arul Kumar (46), Pravin (43), Joison (37), Manjunath (38), Francis, Christopher Anand, Sangeetha Prakash, Sudhir Kumar Kestur, Latha Vema Reddy, Bhanu Prakash and Veena Prakash, all of whom are Bengaluru residents. A few travel agents are also in the dock for supporting the racket.

"About a year ago, we received information about a child trafficking ring functioning from Bengaluru and we formed a special investigation team (SIT). We collected information from the passport office, foreigner regional registration offices, travel agents and police from different states and uncovered the racket. We are interrogating the 16 members we have arrested. Hopefully, we should be able to track down the kids," Additional Commissioner of Police (Bengaluru-East) P Harishekaran, who headed the SIT, said.

The kingpin of the racket would identify potential 'transporters', men and women, who were teamed up to behave like couples. Then, abducted kids or kids handed over by the grandparents (whose children had entered the US illegally) would be assigned to each couple, and trained to behave like a family in Bengaluru. The gang then prepared fresh identities for the family, including ration cards, Aadhar cards, birth certificates, voter IDs, house rent agreements etc on the basis of which the family would secure a passport in Bengaluru.

A team in Chennai would then assist the gang in procuring Non-Immigration B1/B2 visa (business and pleasure).

"On obtaining the visa, the family (group of 4-5) would travel to the US from Chennai. The 'parents' would return within a week after dropping the children off. In some cases, the couple returned to India within 48 hours. But in all the cases, the children never returned. We verified the antecedents of these transporters, and none of them reside at the addresses mentioned in the passport or their documents. We are tracing transporters from all the three states," added Harishekaran.

Many of the transporters were from middle-class families from north India. Each couple was paid Rs 3 lakhs to accompany the child. In a few cases, persons impersonating either the mother or the father had not returned to India. The police said they are investigating how the kids were convinced to travel to the US with strangers. "The gang said a few families living in the US illegally wanted to be reunited with their kids. More than 12 kids were reunited with their parents using false identities," an officer from the SIT said.

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