Meerut man arrested for trafficking minors

NOIDA: The Gautam Budh Nagar police nabbed a suspect who was on the run since December last year and was wanted for allegedly kidnapping minor girls and selling them to people for marriage in different states, police said on Monday.

The accused, identified as Sabuddin, a resident of Meerut, is part of a gang that was running a human trafficking racket in the Delhi-ncr.

Eight suspects of the gang were arrested earlier after a complaint was lodged in December, regarding a 12-yearold girl who had gone missing.

“Sabuddin was absconding since the gang was busted in January. His role was to finalise deals for selling minor girls to buyers. He had been hiding and changing his locations for the past five months. He returned to his home in Meerut recently and, after getting a tip-off, our personnel arrested him from his residence,” said Yogendra Kumar, assistant commissioner of police, Noida-2.

Earlier, a case was registered against the suspects under Section 363 (kidnapping) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) at the Badalpur police station on December 26. Police launched a probe and found out that the gang had lured the girl and sold her for ₹70,000 to a 52-year-old man in Rohtak, Haryana.

While six suspects were arrested in January, two other accomplices of the gang were nabbed later. The arrested suspects told the police that they used to identify minor girls in the Greater Noida area and trafficked them for marriage. They used to lure the minors and take them to Haryana. Later, the gang would sell the minors to men for marriage, police added.

Sabuddin was held under Section 366A (procuration of minor girl), 368 (keeping in confinement a kidnapped person), 370A (human trafficking), 376A (punishment for causing death) of the IPC and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act.