17 girls rescued from bus in Odisha, suspected trafficker held

A group of 17 teenaged girls have been rescued from a bus in Odisha's Koraput district, police said on Friday.

One person, who was accompanying the girls, has been arrested on the charge of trafficking, a police officer said.

Acting on a tip-off, a police team rescued 17 girls from a bus at Jeypore bus stand and nabbed the 26-year-old man on Wednesday night, Jeypore Sub-Divisional Police Officer (SDPO) Varun Guntupalli said.

"We had specific information that the girls were being trafficked from Raighar in Nabarangpur district to Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh in a bus. Accordingly, we stopped the vehicle at Jeypore bus stand," he said.

The accused revealed during interrogation that from Visakhapatnam, he would have taken the girls, all from Nabarangpur district, to Chennai in Tamil Nadu to engage them in construction work, the SDPO said.

All the girls are in their teens, he said, adding that steps are being taken to hand over the rescued girls to their parents.

"A racket is suspected to be operational in the region, members of which are trafficking children to other states by promising them lucrative jobs," Guntupalli said.

Awareness campaigns have been launched in the area to make people cautious about human traffickers, he added.