HUMAN RIGHTS SOCIETY

Police nabbed three alleged human traffickers and rescued 31 people from a residential hotel in Chittagong yesterday.

Abdu Rouf, OC of Chandgaon police station in the port city, said the arrests were made in a hotel named Al-Sakera in the Bahaddarhat area around 2:30am on a tip-off.

He said the people lined up for being trafficked were all from the south-western district of Madaripur and were headed for Malaysia by sea.

The alleged traffickers were Jafor Alam, 35, his brother-in-law Mujibur Rahman, 26, from Teknaf upazila of Cox’s Bazar, and Bacchu Talukder, a “human trafficking vendor” from Madaripur.

Police also claimed to have identified the gang leader of the racket Jamal, from Cox’s Bazar, and were conducting drives to pick him up, said Shah Mohammad Abdur Rouf, assistant commissioner of Chittagong Metropolitan Police.

Bacchu told police that he had connection with his younger brother Israfil, an expatriate Bangladeshi living in Malaysia. Each of those 31 were supposed to pay Tk2.4 lakh upon arrival in Malaysia. Bachchu’s duty was to take them to Chittagong.

Mujibur and Jafor, the other two arrested, were supposed to send the people to the city’s Natun Bridge area for putting on board a foreign ship. Jamal had a secret deal with the ship which had been waiting at the Bay of Bengal for carrying the 31 to Malaysia.

The Dhaka Tribune reporter visited the Chandgaon police station, where the 31 had been kept, and talked to some of them. He found out that most of them were illiterate and poor.”