Mohali police arrest five more members of human trafficking gang
The five accused in the human trafficking case have been identified as Sonia, 47, Malkit Singh, 29, and Vinay Seth, 22, from Jalandhar, and Sarabjit Kaur, 43, and Gaurav Sahota from Ludhiana
Two months after Mohali police rescued 33 immigration fraud victims who were duped, kidnapped and held captive on foreign shores by a human trafficking gang, police have arrested five more members of the gang, taking the total arrests to 10.
The five accused, who were arrested between March 19 and 22, have been identified as Sonia, 47, Malkit Singh, 29, and Vinay Seth, 22, from Jalandhar, and Sarabjit Kaur, 43, and Gaurav Sahota from Ludhiana. ₹8 lakh in cash, two cars, a motorcycle and electronic items worth ₹5 lakh were recovered from them.
Those arrested earlier are Baldish Kaur and Gurjit Singh, both residents of Jalandhar, and Sahil, Som Raj and Veena Kumar from Mukerian, Hoshiarpur.
Mohali senior superintendent of police (SSP) Sandeep Garg said while the victims languished in inhuman conditions, these agents were maintaining a lavish lifestyle. They were maintaining heavy cash balances, travelling in swanky cars, wearing premium gold jewellery and using expensive smartphones.
Among the seizures so far are ₹2.92 crore in cash, $2,000, ₹66 lakh kept in various bank accounts, gold jewellery worth ₹62.68 lakh, seven cars, a motorcycle and seven high-end mobiles phones.
According to police, the accused used to lure residents of Punjab, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh wishing to go to the US or Europe and later extorted anywhere between ₹30 and ₹40 lakh from their family members after holding them captive.
The gang members, according to SSP, used to tell the victims that they would take them to the US or Europe via Mexico and charge them only after that.
“They would then take the clients to Nepal or Indonesia, torture them and force them to call their kin to say they had reached Mexico. Once the kin paid up, the gang members, based in India, would either leave the victims in Indonesia or make them board a flight back to India,” the top cop said. The matter came to light after one of the victims managed to contact his family in Mohali.