3 minors taken from Assam to work in Bengaluru

Three underage girls brought from Assam to work at a juice centre in Bengaluru have been rescued by the activists of a non-governmental organisation. 

Rangaswamy R and other members of the nonprofit BOSCO told the police that they became suspicious after spotting the girls aged around 15 getting off the Guwahati Express at the Bengaluru Cantonment railway station on Friday. The girls were accompanied by a man who later identified himself as Rajesh Kumar Kam (27). According to Rangaswamy, he closely observed the girls' body language and suspected that they had been trafficked. The BOSCO team confronted the four-member group. Kam claimed that he was the caretaker of the girls and that they had come to Bengaluru for sightseeing. 

But when the girls were taken separately and questioned, they said they were high school students and were sent by their parents with Kam to work in Bengaluru. The NGO team then approached the Bengaluru Cantonment railway police and filed a complaint. Police booked Kam under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act. 

Further inquiries revealed the girls belonged to poor families and that Kam had promised their parents that he would take care of them and improve their living condition. 

Kam told the BOSCO team he planned to place the girls with a juice centre but refused to specify where it's located. The team suspected the girls had been trafficked and produced them before the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) which, in turn, sent them to the state-run home for girls for rehabilitation. CWC members later contacted the girls' parents who confirmed they had willingly sent them with Kam but refused to come to Bengaluru to depose before the committee, a senior police officer said.