Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh police uncovered a child trafficking ring and arrested 16 people, officials said on Monday. Six kidnapped children were rescued in the operation.
As part of the special anti-human trafficking operation ‘Operation Khushi’, the children were rescued during an overnight operation in Aligarh and surrounding areas.
The police nabbed three persons working near a crossing in village Borna under Mahuakheda police station area on Sunday evening following a tip-off, said Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Kalanidhi Naithani. They told police that four kidnapped children were being detained in a house in the Ganga Nagar colony, which is located under the Gandhi Park police station.
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The police immediately raided the premises and rescued them, the SSP added, two more kidnapped children were rescued from the clutches of the gang at another house in an area under the jurisdiction of Delhi gate police station.
‘Two of the children were from Ghaziabad and four from Aligarh,’ Naithani said, calling the overnight action ‘unprecedented’. ‘Sixteen people, including nine women, have been arrested for facilitating the sale and purchase of infants,’ he said.
Members of a gang with a nexus across the state would kidnap children and then give them to the women, who would sell them to childless couples for Rs 50,000 each and sometimes even for lakhs, Naithani said.
The rescue team, led by Superintendent of Police (SP) Kuldeep Singh Gunawat, was rewarded, he said. He also said that the children have been returned to their families and further legal action is being taken against the gang members.
According to Naithani, ‘Operation Khushi’, involving the anti-human trafficking unit (AHTU), was launched after reports of increasing abductions of children in the district.
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