Agents paid Rs 4-5K for trafficking Bangladeshi girls into India: ED

New Delhi: A sum of Rs 4,000-5,000 per person was being paid by Hyderabad-based flesh trade operators to agents based along the India-Bangladesh international border in West Bengal for trafficking Bangladeshi girls into the country, according to an ED investigation.

The money laundering probe stems from a Telangana Police FIR, a case re-registered by the National Investigation Agency (NIA), against a flesh trade and prostitution racket being run by two brothels located on the outskirts of the city.

The Enforcement Directorate said in a statement on Thursday that it has provisionally attached assets worth Rs 1.90 lakh as part of this investigation and this includes funds kept in "Paytm wallets and bank accounts" as well as an immovable property of a man named Ruhul Amin Dhali, one of the "most prominent" agents involved in the illegal trafficking of Bangladeshi girls into India.

The accused, according to the ED, were running brothels at various places in and around Hyderabad and they also sent the victim girls to other brothels and agents, on a commission basis.

They used "fake and forged" Indian identity documents and opened several bank accounts and online wallets for their illegal activities, the federal probe agency said.

"For trafficking the Bangladeshi girls and others, the accused were paying around Rs 4-5 thousand per person to agents/middlemen abutting the Indo-Bangladesh border in West Bengal, which was shared between various parties involved in the trafficking on either side of the border," it said.

Payments for this trafficking were made through banking channels and also in cash to the agents, the ED found.

To "conceal" the money trail, the agency found, the accused used money transfer services of various financial intermediaries and shared their mobile numbers only for remittance of funds and they "systematically" structured these into small payments below the regulatory threshold limit, in order to evade the radar of the probe agencies.

"A substantial part of the proceeds of crime were found to be remitted to multiple persons abutting the Bangladesh border in West Bengal, who withdrew the money in cash and handed it to other hawala agents who ensured that the funds were remitted to the families of the victim girls in Bangladesh, at times also using bKash (the mobile banking service of Bangladesh Bank)," he said.

The NIA had found that "most" of the accused arrested in the case were Bangladeshi nationals who had "illegally" entered India without valid travel documents.

They had obtained fake/forged Indian identity documents and despite arrests in other FIRs, continued to engage in prostitution and illegal trafficking of Bangladeshi girls, the NIA found.

The victim girls were trafficked into India, through illegal border crossings in West Bengal, with the help of various agents active on the international border on the pretext of better paying jobs in beauty parlours, tailor shops, steel factories, as housemaids, etc. but the girls were later forced into flesh trade.

A special court had awarded life imprisonment to six accused in one such case probed by the NIA, the ED said.