Guwahati: Assam Police Special Task Force (STF) on July 29 arrested two persons from Tripura in connection with a Rohingya trafficking case. The two accused, identified as Sagar Sarkar and Kajal Sarkar, were arrested from the Mohanpur area under the West District of Tripura by a team of Assam STF. While conducting the raid, the STF team also detained a Bangladeshi national. STF Assam arrested the two accused with the help of Sidhai Police Station and Lefunga Police Station of Tripura Police.
While conducting a raid at Kajal Sarkar’s house in Mohanpur’s Boalia, the STF Assam team also detained a Bangladeshi national identified as Bishnu Chandra Mondal. Later he was handed over to Tripura police. The STF Assam registered a case of Rohingya trafficking in Silchar in 2022. In the investigation of that case, the names of these two persons from Mohanpur subdivision of Tripura came up.
The STF team seized nine Aadhaar cards, two PAN cards and some Bangladeshi documents and foreign currency were found while arresting Kajal Sarkar.
It should be mentioned that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) filed charge sheet against 6 Indian criminals involved in trafficking Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims into India. The charge sheet was filed before a special NIA court in Guwahati, Assam, on June 4 2022. Six accused were booked under sections 120B, 370(3), and 370(5) of the Indian Penal Code. The charges framed by NIA include trafficking for sexual exploitation, abduction, abuse of power, and criminal conspiracy.
The case pertains to the trafficking of Rohingya and Bangladeshis into India for the purpose of exploitation and in order to settle them in India permanently on the basis of fake Indian documents. The case was registered suo-moto by the NIA on December 27 2021. The six charge-sheeted human traffickers are Kumkum Ahmed Choudhury @ K K Ahmed Chaudhury @ Asiqul Ahmed, Ahiya Ahmed Choudhury, Bapan Ahmed Choudhury, Shah Alam Laskar, Jamaluddin Choudhury and Wanbiang Suting.
All five criminals are residents of the Cachar district of Assam, and Wangbiang Suting is a resident of Meghalaya.The investigation has revealed that the accused persons were involved in the organised human trafficking of Rohingya/Bangladeshi minor girls and women in association with other conspirators based in different parts of India and Bangladesh. The accused persons had arranged for transportation, accommodation, procurement of fake documents, etc., for the trafficked Rohingya victims.
Earlier on 28th July, CM Himanta Biswa Sarma said that Assam is being used as a corridor by Rohingyas to travel to cities like Delhi, Bangalore and Kashmir. Some traffickers of Tripura have facilitated these infiltrations, which were found in our investigation.
On June 11, a local court in Agartala sent five Bangladesh nationals, including two women, to prison for illegally entering India. Tripura police have launched an investigation into their suspected involvement in an international human trafficking racket.
Railway police, on June 10, arrested them from the Agartala-Bengaluru Humsafar Express at Dharmanagar station in North Tripura. The arrested Bangladeshi nationals were identified as Shafiqul Islam (40), Mohammad Rafiq (27), Mumtaz Akhtar (18), Rozina Begum (35) and Shahab Ali Sheikh (61).
Police said with the help of a broker, they illegally entered India through Amtali in Bangladesh on Friday night. The arrested Bangladeshi nationals revealed in police interrogation that they had paid Rs 20,000 each to the broker to cross the border. “We were brought to Tripura by a hidden route and we didn’t see any security guards,” one arrested Bangladeshi national revealed, a police source said.
Earlier on July 18 a man was arrested in Tripura’s Belonia in connection to a human trafficking case registered in Silchar, Assam. Has been sent to Assam’s Silchar on transit demand on Tuesday, police said. The person was booked by STF Assam police in 2022. He was arrested in Belonia along with a Bangladeshi woman on July 12. The accused identified as Partha Sen, was charged with various sections of the Passport and Foreigners Act and human trafficking of Rohingyas to Assam and other parts of North East India.
