The gang lured young women from vulnerable families into romantic relationships with promises of marriage, only to sell them later to wealthy buyers in Delhi and Noida, said police. Bijnor : UP Police busted an inter-state human trafficking network and arrested six people, including three women, from a bus stand in Uttarakhand’s Haridwar.
The operation came to light after a Bijnor resident lodged a complaint at Najibabad police station on Oct 26, stating that his daughter had been lured away on the pretext of marriage. Hailing from Bijnor, Saharanpur and Dehradun, the gang members operated with little regard for personal ties — police noted that Shivam had earlier sold his wife to a Delhi-based man for Rs 80,000.
Police said the gang’s target customers were “unmarried men, widowers and lonely men whose wives had just left them. The network reportedly spanned across parts of Delhi-NCR as well as districts in Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. They used matrimonial advertisements to build their list of prospective buyers. The six individuals arrested have been identified as Mukhram, his son Shivam, Simran alias Poonam (Shivam’s wife), Jyoti, Kavita and Sonu.
Acting on leads, police traced the missing woman to Haridwar on Monday, where she was held captive and was “about to be trafficked to a buyer in Noida.
In the Bijnor missing woman case, a Rs 1 lakh deal was clinched.
Bijnor SP Krishna Kumar Bishnoi said, “Preliminary investigation indicated the gang used to fix deals at a high price. Details of the monetary transactions surfaced during initial probe. Investigation is underway to identify the others involved in the racket.”