Acting on information given by child trafficking gang members during interrogation, Uttarakhand police rescued two more abducted babies on Sunday. A total of seven such babies have been rescued by the police so far. The police had on Friday busted a child-trafficking racket, arresting four persons allegedly involved in kidnapping children from the pilgrims or railway passengers, while they are sleeping at Haridwar Railway Station.
The arrested gang members include a couple — Krishnaveer and Rekha - hailing from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. Pilgrims who come from different parts of the country generally spend nights with their families either on ghats or on railway station platforms. The modus operandi of the traffickers was that they lifted children when they and their parents were asleep and escaped unnoticed. The operations being successful, they later sold these children at high prices to those interested to have them for adoption.
The Haridwar Police said that the accused Krishanveer and his wife Rekha, Yamuna nagar (Haryana) native Balvinder Singh and Doiwala (Dehradun) resident Jagmohan had been sent to jail under judicial custody after being produced in the court. To drill more information out of the accused, the police on Monday filed a petition in the district court seeking their police remand. The court fixed Tuesday for the next hearing of the case.
Haridwar CO City Chandra Mohan Singh said that only four cases related to kidnapping of babies had been reported in Hardwar GRP Police Station over the past
one year. But police have recovered seven babies on the information provided by these accused in course of their being grilled by police. Three children about whom no case had been lodged might have been kidnapped or snatched by gang members from other parts of the country, police said.
The babies were recovered from various places like Rishikesh, Chandigarh, Yamunanagar, Karnal, Delhi and Jammu and Kashmir. These children had been sold out to the childless, affluent families who are eager to have male child for any cost, he added.
As per police, the accused Balvinder and Jagmohan used to approach the prospective buyers, saying that they were selling their own children, under compelling circumstances, to collect money as their both kidneys had stopped functioning. They confessed to have sold the children at prices ranging from Rs90,000 to Rs3.5 lakh.
Four children have been handed over to the families who had lodged FIRs in the GRP Police station after they had lost their children
in Haridwar.
Police are trying hard to trace out other families which have lost their children. Moreover, they are in touch with the police stations of other States where child missing diaries had been lodged over the past one year, he added.
Mention worthy, to solve cases of missing children as reported in Haridwar GRP Police Station, Haridwar SSP Sadanand Date had recently formed several teams consisting of personnel from Special Operation Group, GRP Police Station and local police stations. The teams were allotted specific tasks and after deployment, their performances were being regularly monitored by senior police officers. Breakthroughs came their way as they arrested some of the accused.
Krishanveer and his wife Rekha were members of the gang whose area of operation was Haridwar, police confirmed. Its members used to lift the children while their parents were sleeping on the platforms or the parking areas in the railway station.
Krishanveer used to supply these children to Jagmohan and Balvinder who, on their part, used to sell them at higher prices to interested buyers. The police teams are working on several angles to get to the bottom of such cases, the officers said.