Continuing its crackdown against the gang involved in trafficking of Myanmar and Bangladesh nationals into India by forging their identities, sleuths of the UP Anti-Terror Squad arrested nine more suspects on Monday taking the tally of arrested gang members to 18.
Sources confirmed that an ATS team picked up 20 suspects after conducting a raid in coordination with West Bengal Police at Gulshan Colony, West Chowbaga on Sunday. The detainees included a key accused, Bangladeshi national Mahifuzur Rahman (30),from West Chowbaga area in Kolkata. The key accused is a resident of Munshiganj in Bangladesh. The others who were detained by the ATS were suspected to be Bangladeshis and were taken to Anandapur police station for grilling.
Meanwhile, IG (ATS) GK Goswami issued an official statement about the arrests here on Monday. “With the support of other agencies, on December 11, we got the information that eight Bangladeshis — Allahudeen aka Rinku Vishwas, Rajib Hussain aka Ajit Das, Alameen Ahmed aka Rajesh Vishwas, Zameel Ahmed aka Palash Vishwas, Asidul Islam aka Vijay Das, Shakhawat Khan aka Golak Mandal, Hussain Mohamed Fahad aka Manik Dutta and Zaibul Islam aka Govinda Das — were being made to travel by Sealdah-Delhi Rajdhani Express and headed to Delhi. From Delhi, they were to travel to Dubai,” the communique said.
“On getting information, a team of UP ATS left for Deen Dayal Upadhyay railway station from where they boarded the train to identify Bangladeshi nationals while another team comprising members of the Kanpur field unit and that of the main unit left for Kanpur station and waited. As soon as the train reached platform 3 of Kanpur station, the eight identified Bangladeshis were made aware of the matter and asked to deboard. From the station, they were taken in government vehicles to ATS headquarters in Lucknow. During quizzing it surfaced that the syndicate took Re 1 lakh in Indian currency to provide Indian citizenship to Bangladeshi and other nationals and were then sent abroad as Indians. The mastermind of the syndicate- Mahifuzur Rahman was arrested from Kolkata by the field team of ATS on Sunday and he was being brought to Lucknow on Transit Remand," the statement said.
Officials said that Mahifuzur Rahman illegally entered India in 2010 and later on the basis of fake identity cards, he procured an Indian passport and flew to Dubai in 2013. A few years later, he returned and started this human trafficking syndicate and illegally brought nationals from Bangladesh, Myanmar and other countries to India and managed them citizenship by getting fake Aadhar cards, PAN cards, passports and other identity cards.