Five rescued from traffickers near Rangia rly station

Five persons, including a minor boy, were rescued from a house where they were lodged for alleged trafficking near Rangia railway station, the police said today.

Acting on a tip off, a police team raided the house and rescued the five persons yesterday, a police officer said.

The trafficker who had kept the five persons in the house is absconding and a search launched to track him.

On being interrogated the five told the police that they had separately come to Guwahati's business area Paltanbazar yesterday from different parts of Assam, Meghalaya and West Bengal in search of employment when an unknown man suddenly came to them and offered them jobs in biscuit and iron factories in Jammu and Kashmir.

The four men in their early 20s and the minor boy about 15 years old belonging to poor families in Darjeeling in WB, Shillong in Maghalaya and Helem, Gohpur and Lakhimpur in Assam were offered Rs 8000 per month as salary and other facilities, they told the police.

The unknown trafficker brought them to Rangia from Guwahati and lodged them in a room near the railway station.

The police have arranged to send the five rescued persons back to their respective homes with the help of their family, he said.

Rangia railway station is being used as a transit point by human traffickers due to easy communication from there to the rest of the country and Nepal, the police said.

The Railway Protection Force rescued six girls, including four minors, on May 21 when they were being allegedly trafficked at Rangia railway station, five minor boys and five men on May 15, besides sixteen girls, including nine minors, early in the month from the same place, the police said.