PIONEER EDGE NEWS SERVICE/ Haridwar
Haridwar police have dismantled an interstate child trafficking and kidnapping ring and arrested six suspects, including two female gang members. Two children were recovered, too. One was three-year-old girl Radhika and the other was a one and half years old Kartik. Police had launched a hunt for the gang members after a resident of Bairagi Camp, Vinod Solanki had reported the kidnapping of his three-year-old daughter to the Kankhal police station on June 6. “We busted the gang within 72 hours after receiving the complaint,” said the senior superintendent of police, Hatidwar, Navneet Singh.
Soon after the complaint was registered, special police teams were formed and hundreds of CCTV footage were scanned. Besides, dump data was analysed and social media was used to track down the suspects.
Later, police conducted raids in both Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh and arrested six members of the gang. Frightened by the raids, other gang members fled, abandoning the kidnapped girl at Delhi’s Anand Vihar railway station from where she was recovered.
The six arrested suspects have been identified as Mohammad Akil (UP), Naseema (UP), Zulfeqar (UP), Dharmendra Kumar (Haridwar), Preeti Sharma (UP) and Shiva Singh alias Gaurav (Bihar).
The accused are said to have revealed during interrogation that they traded children for childless couples with the price of each ranging from Rs 2 lakh to Rs 5 lakh. The accused would sell the children by claiming they were their own children or orphans, police said, adding that they have added charges of human trafficking to the case.
