Indian court sentences 8 Bangladeshis among 9 to life in 2019 human trafficking case

The Special Court for NIA Cases in Hyderabad has sentenced nine people, including eight Bangladeshi nationals, to life imprisonment for their involvement in a 2019 human trafficking case in which Bangladeshi women were trafficked to India and forced into prostitution.

According to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the court passed the order on September 17 and also imposed a combined fine of Rs 1,37,000 on the convicts. They will each face three months of simple imprisonment if they fail to pay the fine, ThePrint reported.

The nine people sentenced by the court 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).

The case concerns a trafficking network that brought Bangladeshi women into India after luring them with promises of lucrative jobs and decent wages before forcing them into prostitution.

Telangana Police initially registered the case at Pahadi Shareef Police Station in Hyderabad following an operation in September 2019. Three Bangladeshi women were rescued from a brothel in Jalpally village, while another woman was rescued from a house in Mahimood Colony in Balapur, Hyderabad.

The NIA later took over the investigation and re-registered the case on October 12, 2019, as RC-03/2019/NIA/HYD.

Investigators subsequently established the involvement of the accused in the trafficking network. The NIA filed a chargesheet against 12 accused on October 17, 2020, including three absconding suspects identified as A1, A3 and A7.

The accused were arrested from different locations in West Bengal and Telangana during 2019 and 2020.

They were prosecuted under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Foreigners Act, 1946, and the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956.