VISAKHAPATNAM: The officials of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) and Government Railway Police (GRP) rescued eleven children, including nine minor girls from parts of Nabarangpur in southern Odisha, at Visakhapatnam railway station while they were waiting to board a train. Although the girls were rescued on Thursday, it came to light on Saturday. The GRP personnel at Vizag railway station arrested 41-year-old Ravi Kumar Bishoi, who was involved in illegal human trafficking.
Acting on a tip-off, the RPF team, led by Sub-Inspector V Keerthi Reddy, rescued the girls who were waiting at the railway station to board a train.
Speaking to TOI, Sub-Inspector Keerthi Reddy said their investigation revealed that the human trafficker, Ravi Kumar, brought the girls to Vizag by manipulating details of the victims on Aadhar cards. While he was making all the arrangements to send the girls to Tiruppur in Tamil Nadu for work in the textile industry, we rescued the victim girls (all are poor and don’t have any idea about their role of work) at Vizag railway station, she added.
The age details of the nine girls on the original Aadhar cards were manipulated by Ravi Kumar so that it appeared they were above 18 years. When the children were spoken to individually, they revealed different ages and different versions. The father of one of the girls informed that he did not have any update on the employment of his daughter, Keerthi Reddy added.
The investigation indicated that the girls were coerced into forced labour, and there exists no evidence to substantiate allegations of the girls being deceived into prostitution.
The victims are poor from rural areas and were lured by Ravi Kumar with promises of employment in the shrimp industry and textile industry. The investigation revealed that Ravi Kumar, a native of Bihar, has links with some traffickers in Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, and Nepal, and he was involved in human trafficking for the past few years. Promising lucrative employment, Ravi Kumar pushed more than 100 girls into doing menial jobs where they were poorly paid, the police added.
The rescued girls were sent to a govt shelter home in Vizag city and were produced before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) in Vizag city. The girls will be sent to their respective homes under police security.
The GRP police registered a case against Ravi Kumar under section 143 (5) (trafficking of more than one child) of BNS, and further investigation is ongoing. EOM