Taxi driver helps police bust infant trafficking gang

GURUGRAM: An alert taxi driver drove three persons, including two women, travelling in his vehicle with two stolen female infants to DLF Phase 3 police station in Gurugram on Friday night, thus helping police to bust an interstate child trafficking gang. Police said on Saturday that the gang would steal infants from Delhi hospitals and sell them in neighbouring states.

According to police, the three suspects -- Surender Kaur (44), Neha (37) and Harjinder Singh -- booked the taxi near Dhaula Kuan in Delhi for ₹4,000 for travelling to Alwar in Rajasthan.

However, their telephonic conversation with a person raised the suspicion of driver Umesh Lohia (35), a resident of Gurugram’s Nathupur, that the two infants were stolen and they were trying to make a deal for selling one of them for ₹2.4 lakh and another for ₹2.7 lakh to someone in Alwar, police said.

Surender and Harjinder hail from Alwar, while Neha is a resident of Sector 16 in Delhi’s Rohini, police said, adding that they have been arrested.

The stolen infants were handed over to the child welfare committee and efforts are on to trace their parents, police said. The infants, hardly 20 days old, were probably stolen from hospitals in Delhi for selling to issueless couples in other states, they said.

According to police, the Delhi Police had arrested Surender in 2014 in a child kidnap case.

Preet Pal Sangwan, assistant commissioner of police (crime), on Saturday said that police teams have been sent to Alwar and Delhi to arrest other gang members. “There are at least 12 more members in the gang which had been operating since 2014,” the ACP said.

Sangwan said the Umesh was returning from Delhi when the trio hired his vehicle for travelling to Alwar.

“The deal to sell the infants didn’t materialise, following which the trio cancelled their journey to Alwar and asked the driver to drop them to Raghubir Nagar in Delhi,” Sangwan said.

“But the driver drove them to DLF Phase 3 police station without letting them know. We will move court for police remand of the suspects for detailed interrogation,” he said.

The Gurugram police commissioner has announced ₹25,000 reward for Umesh for helping police, Sangwan said, adding that he is one of the several taxi drivers trained by the Gurugram police for crime control in the district.