Bengaluru: Illegal transportation racket busted

Bengaluru: In a major breakthrough, a special team of Bengaluru police busted an illegal child transportation racket that sent children to the United States and arrested 16 members of a gang after simultaneous raids in different parts of the city on Monday. More arrests are likely soon, the police said.

A team of 14 officers raided places under 12 police station limits and arrested the gang members, including its kingpin Uday Prathap Singh and three women. The arrested are Uday Prathap Singh, 44, a resident of Jayamahal, Michael, 37, and Pavin, 43 from Horamavu, Rajesh, 43, from Sahakaranagar, Simon, 36, and Kushalappa, 43 from R.T. Nagar, Gunashekar, 42, Banaswadi, Domnic, 46, Kothanur, Joison, 37, Bommanahalli, Manjunath, 38, Mahalaxmipura, Francis from Kammanahalli, Sangeetha from R.M. Nagar, Latha Verma Reddy from HAL and Sudhir, Bhanu and Veena.

Preliminary investigations revealed that Uday Prathap Singh had illegally sent 25-30 children, all of them said to be under 10 years of age, to the US. He charged Rs 22-25 lakh per child. Majority of the children are from Gujarat and Punjab, the police said.

Additional Commissioner of Police (East) P. Harishekaran said, “A special team was formed to unearth the racket. A year ago, the city police had received credible information, based on which the Special Investigation Team was formed. It collected inputs from various government agencies, like the passport office, FRRO, BBMP and other state and central government agencies, to understand their modus operandi. After a detailed inquiry, collection of actionable intelligence, 14 teams of officers conducted raids in Shivajinagar, Banaswadi, Byappanahalli, R.T. Nagar, Ashok Nagar, Rajajinagar, Vijayanagar, Halasuru Gate, Banashankari, Girinagar and HAL police station limits and arrested the 16 members.”

Mr Harishekaran said, “However, we are yet to investigate whether the children were reached to their biological parents or to some other people. The team was formed last year after we got information from the US consulate.”

Trained for visa interviews
Uday Prathap Singh and his team first identified the couples overstaying in the US and found out the status of their children. The gang then identified couples who would work with them, prepared illegal documents and made the couples take the children to their biological parents in the United States.

“Once the gang found a couple, they contacted their agents in Gujarat, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and other places to bring the minor children to pair them with the fake couples. The couples and the children were trained for a month in preparation for the visa procedure. Special attention was given to children to make them get familiar with their fake parents. The children were asked to behave like family so as not to arouse suspicion of officials while obtaining visas,” the police said.

Teams worked in tandem
While one team brought the children and fake parents together, another team prepared documents, like rental agreements, birth certificates, voter cards and ration cards to get passports as family members. Once the passports were obtained through fraudulent means, another team in Tamil Nadu assisted the family to get non-immigration B1/B2 visas (business & pleasure visa) from the US Consulate in Chennai.

Once they got the visas, the fake parents took the children to the US and left them with their biological parents while returning. The authorities still don’t know the whereabouts of the children in US.