Agartala: During the preliminary investigatin, the arrested human trafficker Jamal told the police that the racket was trying to smuggle the women from Bangladesh to Delhi via train. It is still not clear whether the Rohingya women were sent to Delhi for work purposes; or whether they were planning to send them to foreign countries as a part of flesh trade.
On receiving confirmed intel the railway police conducted operations in Dharmanagar station where the group was waiting for a train on platform No. 1 of the station around 3 PM. The police team asked the group to show their identity documents, but the intruders failed to produce any valid Indian Id. The police then took them to the GRP police station for further interrogation. During the preliminary interrogation police came to know that the Rohingya intruder had illegally entered India from Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, where they lived in different refugee camps.
The arrested human trafficking racket kingpin identified as Jamal Hossain (36), a Bangladeshi national, worked in national capital Delhi for a couple of years. He entered Indian territory from Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh in 2017 and went to Delhi and worked there with fake Indian IDs. During his stay in Delhi, he came in touch with a human trafficking racket and planned to bring Rohingya women to India and sell them at a high price. It is suspected that the racket was planning to sell the young Rohingya women in the Middle East for a huge amount.
Later Jamal returned to Bangladesh six months ago and lured the five young women, aged between 18 and 19, with false promises of jobs and money in Delhi. Jamal, with the help of an Indian trafficking racket based in Tripura, brought the 5 Rohingya women to India through the Tripura border and planned to take them to Delhi by train.
It should be mentioned that Tripura is an intra-state human trafficking corridor, where many such rackets operate.
As many as seven Bangladeshi nationals were apprehended in Dharmanagar under North Tripura District on August 7 this year. The arrested Bangladeshi group included two men, two women, and three children. Interestingly, the arrested Bangladeshi group were on their way to Bangladesh from Bangalore via Tripura. Police sources said that the Bangladeshi nationals were working in Bangalore and had been residing there from 2020 after illegally entering Indian territory.
The Railway Protection Force (RPF) of N. F. Railway, in the month of June, 2023, apprehended as many as 62 foreign nationals for illegally entering India. The illegal migrants were apprehended during different drives and checks conducted at various railway stations and trains over this zone. Further, during this month till 11th July, 2023, RPF teams apprehended 30 illegal migrants which includes 18 Rohingyas and 12 Bangladeshi nationals at Kumarghat, Agartala and Jalpaiguri railway stations.
The vigilant RPF personnels 92 Rohingya and Bangladeshi nationals were nabbed within just 40 days during June and July 2023.
According to the government data placed in the state assembly a total of 7535 people were caught between 2017 to 2019 in Tripura for illegally entering the state, mostly from Bangladesh. The numbers have significantly reduced but still a huge number of Rohingya and Bangladeshi Muslims enters Indian territory via Tripura and vanish in larger Indian cities using fake Indian IDs and documents.
