This story is from July 18, 2016

32 Chhattisgarh girls rescued in UP, five held in sex trafficking racket

32 Chhattisgarh girls rescued in UP, five held in sex trafficking racket
(Representative image)
RAIPUR: In a major breakthrough, Chhattisgarh police rescued 32 women, including minors, from the clutches of sex traffickers near Uttar Pradesh capital Allahabad in the past one month.
Amid UP police initially resisting to co-operate with state to nab the main trafficker, the team camping in UP had built pressure via Home Department and NGOs, which forced the trafficker to surrender.
The trafficker's brother was also arrested when he was in Chhattisgarh to drop the girls back to their native places.
Prompt action by Balod police helped bring back the 32 women to their native places along with five arrests, including main trafficker Sheru.
Balod SP Arif Sheikh, who led the operation for one month, said Sheru had surrendered on Saturday and a warrant has been sent to UP police to arrest and bring him back to the state.
Sheikh said, "Of the 32 rescued, 18 are minors while there is a 40-year-old women also. This is the third lot of girls returning to the state from UP's Barau village, prominent for prostitution. These girls hail from Balod and Rajnandgaon. Previous group of girls were natives of Janjgir-Champa, Baloda Bazaar and Korba. When UP police didn't cooperate we contacted home secretary Kamal Saxena and ADG Daljeet Singh (law & order). With their intervention, Sheru surrendered. Those arrested are Dhaneshwaru Dewar, Amit Kushwah, Payal, Sheru and Deepak Sonkar."

CID ADGP Rajeev Srivastava said, "Tribal girls from Chhattisgarh are subjected to all kinds of trafficking but Operation Smile and our police teams’ hard work to file FIR immediately after a person goes missing, has been building pressure on traffickers. Now, leaving metros, they are rooting themselves in suburbs where the risk factor is low but the rates have gone high in rural pockets. We are strengthening our information network from panchayat level."
Calling it a big emerging trend in tribal hinterlands, Rishikant of NGO Shakti Vahini said that Jharkhand girls from Ghaziabad were also recently rescued from a similar racket and demand for dark-skinned girls was on the rise. “Anti-human trafficking units should join hands with other states to crack the gang of traffickers,” he said.
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About the Author
Rashmi Drolia

Rashmi is a Special Correspondent with The Times of India in Chhattisgarh. She covers Politics, Left Wing Extremism, Crime and Human Rights among other areas of news value.

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