HYDERABAD: A special court for National Investigation Agency (NIA) cases at Hyderabad on Thursday sentenced nine persons, including eight Bangladeshi nationals, to life imprisonment in a 2019 human trafficking case involving Bangladeshi women who were trafficked into India and forced into prostitution.
The court also imposed a total fine of Rs 1,37,000, with three months’ simple imprisonment in default of payment.
The convicts are:- Ruhul Amin Dhali (A2), Mohd Yousuf Khan alias Md Imran (A4), Bithi Begum alias Khadija Shaik (A5), Imamul Ghazi alias Mohd Rana Hussain (A6), Mohammed Al Mamun (A8), Sojib Shaik (A9), Suresh Kumar Das alias Sagor (A10), Mohd Abdulla Munshi alias Abdul Sarkar (A11) and Mohd Ayub Shaik (A12).
According to an NIA official, “These girls are lured with promises of lucrative jobs and a better quality of life in India. They are also provided fake Indian identity documents and eventually forced into prostitution.”
The investigation established that the accused were part of a network led by Ruhul Amin Dhali and Abdul Barik Shaik. Officials also found money transfers between Dhali and Abdul Barik as commissions paid to Dhali for trafficking people across the borders.
The NIA said Dhali and 10 other accused had illegally entered India in the 1980s and established a prostitution racket with Yusuf Khan and Bithi Begum, a husband-and-wife duo, in various parts of the country. The 12 accused allegedly conspired with associates in Bangladesh to identify women aged 19 to 25 and traffic them into India via the Sonai River and Kolkata.
The case was registered by Pahadi Shareef Police Station under the Hyderabad city commissionerate following an operation in September 2019, during which three Bangladeshi women were rescued from a brothel at Jalpally village and another woman from a house at Mahmood Colony, Balapur.
The NIA took over the investigation and re-registered the case on October 12, 2019. It filed a chargesheet against 12 persons in October 2020. Three of them — Abdul Barik Shaik alias Abdul Bariq Sekh alias Raju (A1), Mohd Yousuf Khan alias Md Imran Shaik alias Samir Mondal alias Md Usope ali (A3) and Shareeful Shaik (A7) — were absconding.
Ruhul Amin Dhali was arrested in another case on December 12, 2019, while the remaining accused were picked up from different locations in West Bengal and Telangana in 2019 and 2020. Following the trial, the court convicted nine accused.