6 HELD FOR SELLING GIRLS TO OLDER MEN

GREATER NOIDA: Police arrested six people on Sunday for allegedly kidnapping a 12-year-old girl and selling her off for ₹70,000 to a 52-year-old man for marriage in Haryana, officials said on Monday.

Three women and as many men, including the groom, have been arrested, said the police, adding that a group of five people have been involved in human trafficking, mainly in Haryana, for the past two years. Vrinda Shukla, deputy commissioner of police (women safety), Gautam Budh Nagar, said the victim went missing on December 26, 2021, while playing outside her home in Badalpur’s Chapraula village in Gautam Budh Nagar.

“Based on a complaint by the victim’s mother, a case was registered against the unidentified people under IPC Section 363 (kidnapping) at the Badalpur police station on December 26 last year. Police launched an investigation and found out that the gang had lured the girl and married her off to an elderly person in Haryana’s Rohtak,” Shukla said.

The police conducted a search on Sunday, and rescued the girl from the house of the groom, a resident of Sonipat’s Girdharpur village in Haryana. The groom was arrested immediately.

“He revealed during interrogation that a group of women had sold the girl to him for ₹70,000,” according to Shukla.

Based on information provided by the man, the police conducted searches in Gautam Budh Nagar and Haryana, and arrested the human traffickers.

The suspects confessed to the crime. The suspects were produced before a court and sent to judicial custody on Monday, according to the police.