CHILD TRAFFICKING RACKET BUSTED IN ALIGARH, 6 KIDS RESCUED

AGRA: Aligarh police busted a child trafficking racket with the arrest of 16 persons and recovering five kids stolen away in last seven months from Ghaziabad and Aligarh, officials said on Monday.

The children were rescued during an overnight operation conducted in Aligarh and surrounding areas as part of the special anti-human trafficking ‘Operation Khushi’, they said.

“These five kids were recovered overnight in operation conducted and 16 were arrested for being involved in crime one way or other. These kids were stolen within last 7 months. The main accused arrested included Duryodhan from Etah, Anil Kumar from Sahibabad (Ghaziabad) and Shubham from Hathras” said SSP of Aligarh, Kalanidhi Naithani.

The gang was headed by three men and five women who used to steal away the kid and sell them to childless couples in lieu of money worth Rs. 50,000 to One Lakh. “These arrested accused revealed that they used to lift these kids sleeping in open or moving out of their houses. Women arrested were led by Neha, Chandni, Babli Rekha and Rashmi who used to look for customers for these stolen kids. These children were sold to childless couple for Rs, 50,000 to One Lakh on basis of settlement with needy couples,” said the SSP. The police team led by SP City Kuldeep Gunawat busted the gang.

LUCKNOW Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Monday announced that the Covid-19 (24-hour) positivity rate in Uttar Pradesh had now come down to a negligible 0.01%. Positivity rate is the number of samples that test positive against the total number of samples tested.

Yogi Adityanath made the announcement at a Covid-19 review meeting here.

“With concerted efforts, now 11 districts have no active Covid cases while there are 857 active cases across the state. This situation is similar to what it was on April 18, 2020, the initial days of Covid onset in the state,” he said.

He also said, “The state on average is doing between 2.5 lakh and 3 lakh tests each day and the positivity rate is a mere 0.01%. The state has effective control on the second wave of the pandemic and will continue the trace, test, treat and vaccinate policy.”

He added that in the last few days no district in the state had reported fresh Covid-19 cases in double digits. While 53 districts did not report any fresh cases, 22 other districts reported single-digit cases.

“In the last 24 hours, 2.27 lakh tests were done of which only 33 tested positive and 64 patients have recovered. The recovery rate in the state is 98.6%,” he said.

The chief minister said the state had established 6,522 PICU (paediatric intensive care unit) beds and 3,000 NICU (neo-natal ICU) beds so far in preparation for the possible third wave of the pandemic.

He also said the vaccination drive in the state was going on well with a total of 4.44 crore doses administered across the state so far. “In July, 1.32 crore doses have been administered so far,” he said.