KOLKATA: A joint team of Kolkata Police, Bengaluru Police and Bongaon Police arrested the kingpin of a gang of traffickers from Bangladesh, Prafulla Naik, and two of his associates — Jagdish Ghosh and Tinku Biswas.
According to Bengaluru Police, Naik had been trapping women from Bangladesh and Bengal by promising them lucrative jobs in beauty parlours or sales or by initiating ‘relationships’ with them. Once the women were in his net, two women from his gang, whom he would introduce as his girlfriends, used to set up a trap and sell the victims to brothels in south India.
Naik started working at a fast food stall on Kalakar Street in Burrabazar in December. The owner, though, was intrigued by the number of women who came to meet him. Sources claimed that Naik been running the racket for the past five years and cops believed he might have a link with the trafficked Bangladeshi women who were rescued from the Kolkata airport two weeks ago. Just like in Kolkata, most of the sex rackets were being operated in Bengaluru under the guise of spa centres.
The Bengaluru Police tracked his movements and phone as part of a one-and-half-month operation.
Cops said Naik would cross over the international border illegally with the women and then keep them in a ‘safehouse’ in Bongaon under the strict watch of Ghosh and Biswas. In December, the HAL police, under the Whitefield police division, in Bengaluru received a complaint from three of the victims who were rescued.
“He had brought the three women — including one from Bangladesh — to Bengaluru from Howrah station with help of the two women accomplices. A Bengaluru police team used technical surveillance and came to central Kolkata where the local divisional police and Posta police extended help to nab Naik.
He is now being taken back to Bengaluru on transit remand, said Kolkata police sources. His two associates were nabbed by another Bengaluru police team with help from local police.
Karnataka and Bengal have been in focus over the last decade for having some of the highest figures in human trafficking.