In the past one month Chhattisgarh police rescued 32 women, including minors, from the clutches of sex traffickers near Allahabad.

Initially the UP police didn’t co-operate to nab the main trafficker, but the team camping in UP had built pressure via Home Department and NGOs, which forced the trafficker to surrender. The trafficker’s brother was also arrested when he was in Chhattisgarh to drop the girls back to their native places.

According to TOI, prompt action by Balod police helped bring back the 32 women to their native places along with five arrests, including main trafficker Sheru.

Balod SP Arif Sheikh, who led the operation for one month, said that Sheru had surrendered on Saturday and a warrant has been sent to UP police to arrest and bring him back to the state.

He further said that Sheikh said, that of the 32 rescued, 18 are minors while there is a 40-year-old women also. This is the third lot of girls returning to the state from UP’s Barau village, prominent for prostitution. These girls hail from Balod and Rajnandgaon. When UP police refused to cooperate they contacted home secretary Kamal Saxena and ADG Daljeet Singh (law & order). With their intervention, Sheru surrendered. Those arrested are Dhaneshwaru Dewar, Amit Kushwah, Payal, Sheru and Deepak Sonkar.

Rajeev Srivastava, CID ADGP said that tribal girls from Chhattisgarh are subjected to all kinds of trafficking but Operation Smile and the police teams’ hard work to file FIR immediately after a person goes missing, has been building pressure on traffickers. Now, leaving metros, they are rooting themselves in suburbs where the risk factor is low but the rates have gone high in rural pockets. They are strengthening our information network from panchayat level.

Rishikant of NGO Shakti Vahini said that it is a big emerging trend in tribal hinterlands, anti-human trafficking units should join hands with other states to crack the gang of traffickers.