UP ATS to strengthen human intelligence network to check trafficking

Lucknow, Nov 23 : The Uttar Pradesh Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) plans to strengthen its human intelligence network at halt points and route charts of the human trafficking networks to track the traffickers, illegal immigrants and their facilitators through the porous India-Bangladesh border.

Illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and Myanmar easily get settled in different area of Uttar Pradesh and other parts of the country after entering the country through these points.

“The ATS team has zeroed in on some districts like Mathura, Aligarh, Deoband in Saharanpur, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Hapur and other areas of the National Capital Region slums which are the halt points of these traffickers to safely keep the illegal immigrants hiding in heavily populated areas before preparing their forged identities, local addresses and sending them to different cities including Delhi and Ahmedabad for employment,” a senior police official said.

“We are going to deploy our human intelligence network at such places, to tip us off about any illegal immigrant or a person working for the human trafficking racket.

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The official said it was easy to arrest human traffickers and illegal immigrants when they were in Uttar Pradesh as trafficking operated from here and also used it as transit route and halt points.

He said it was tougher to track them once they shifted to other locations or other parts of the country.

He said the ATS team had even prepared different route charts used by human traffickers to bring illegal immigrants via West Bengal and Assam to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and then spread them across the country.

“These route charts were prepared according to the information extracted from Ibrahim Khan and Tanya Mandal, both Bangladesh nationals, arrested from Bengaluru on November 9 earlier this month.

Khan was produced before the ATS court on November 10 and his custody remand was procured for probe,” he stated.

The official informed that Tanya Mandal herself was illegally trafficked from Bangladesh to India by Adil-ur-Rehman, a key figure in the human trafficking racket.

Adil-ur-Rehman, along with two other accused, Abu Huraira Gazi and Sheikh Najib-ul- Haq, was arrested on October 11.

He said Adil-ur-Rehman sold Tanya Mandal to Ibrahim Khan for Rs 25,000 in Indian currency.

Adil-ul-Rehman was arrested for human trafficking, while Tanya Mandal faced charges of violating the Foreigners Act by illegally crossing over into Indian territory.

Earlier on November 7, the ATS also apprehended Mohd Hussain, a Myanmar national wanted in connection with the international human trafficking racket, from Kargil colony in Jammu’s Narwal.

The racket is implicated in smuggling women and children from Bangladesh and Myanmar into India using forged identities.

The ATS revealed that Hussain’s name emerged after the arrest of three individuals -- Bangladesh resident Mohammad Noor alias Noorul Islam and two Burmese men, Rahmatullah and Shabiullah, on July 26, 2021.

During that operation, the ATS also rescued two girls and a boy and arrested eight members of the syndicate, of which Hussain is allegedly a part.

The investigation is going on into the network of the syndicate, which utilized fake address proofs to bring victims into India, subsequently selling them to gangs involved in various illicit activities such as flesh trade, slavery and beggary, among others.

amita/ksk