Human trafficking racket busted; 18 held

An international human trafficking racket has been busted with the arrest of 18 people including illegal travel agents and a police constable, police said here Wednesday.

The accused allegedly indulged in trafficking workers to Kuwait via the international airport here and other cities across the country through fake visas, they said.

The arrested include 15 illegal travel agents, a constable and two persons who worked in different positions at two international airlines, police said.

Police seized 250 passports, fake visas, 38 cell phones, fake rubber stamps, computers, laptops and printers besides other material from the possession of the accused, Cyberabad Police Commissioner V CSajjanarsaid.

"In order to avoid the legal channel, unlicensed illegal travel agents adopted illegal methods by changing the employment visa as visit visa and created fake visit visas," the Commissioner said.

After presenting the fake visit visas at the emigration counter, such passengers (workers who intend to take up domestic jobs in Gulf countries) used to board flights and before reaching the destination, they submitted the employment visas at foreign airport.

The illegal travel agents were operating at all major airports including Delhi, Bengaluru, Pune, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata besides the international airport here, Sajjanarsaid.

For medically unfit candidates, the illegal agents used to make the workers board the flight taking visit visa from Hyderabad to Sri Lanka and then to Kuwait on work visa, the Commissoner said.

These agents formed their groups right from village level to district level and State level and lured innocent people after collecting huge amounts from them, Sajjanar said.

They also conducted classes to the gullible people on the travel documents and briefed them not to disclose their names to anyone, police said.

These agents operated from different districts of Andhra Pradesh and also from Karnataka, Goa, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal and Maharashtra.

Special police teams have identified as many as 100 illegal agents involved in the racket and efforts were on to nab them, police added.