Two months after three paralegal volunteers with the State legal service authority exposed a trafficking racket where children were roped in to beg or work, the police have yet to track down the accused, identified as Bablu. He is the prime suspect who is part of a child-trafficking racket operating out of Bengaluru, said the police.
The three women volunteers exposed Bablu’s racket by pretending to be buyers looking for children. In their report they said that Bablu lived in a makeshift house on the footpath near the ISKCON temple on West of Chord Road along with two minor boys aged 11 and three years. He allegedly sold artificial jewellery at the signal while the boys were forced to beg and give them the money.
After keeping tabs on him for a few days, the women approached him seeking a male child. “Bablu refused to sell them the two boys he lived with but assured them that he would arrange for a child from Maharashtra through his contact for ₹50,000. The women recorded the entire conversation and submitted a report to the CCB for further action,” said the police.
Though the report was submitted in March, officials with the women and children protection wing did a spot check only in June. By then Bablu had disappeared. “We found that he had returned to his hometown in Rajasthan along with the children as soon as the lockdown was announced,” said a police inspector.
The jurisdictional Subramanya Nagar police registered an FIR against Bablu on Saturday charging him under various sections of the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act also and the IPC. A special team that was formed to track Bablu down learned that he is currently in Gujarat.
