The Nepal Weekly 
February 20, 2024
Busting a human trafficking racket Nepal Police have freed 11 hostages, all Indian nationals, and arrested eight members of Indian mafia and their one Nepali accomplish, on charges of abduction, human trafficking and cheating.
Those freed by the police include Guruvinder Singh, (Amritsar, Raghar), Subhas Kuwar, (Vaknaur, Hariyada), Bhupendar Singh (Handesara, Punjab), Prateek (Harnampura, Hariyada), Manvir Singh (Bangala, Hosiyarpur, Punjab), Jagdeep Singh (Nadala, Dorangla, Punjab), Gurprit Singh (Mehtabpur, Hosiyarpur, Punjab), Kuldeep Singh (Rajpura, Punjab), Rakesh Kumar (Rajpura, Punjab), Ashish Kumar (Hariyana, Ambala) and Gurpreet Singh (Rajpura, Punjab), according to District Police Range, Kathmandu of the Nepal Police.
The Indians involved in the racket include Indu Singh Yadav, 58 (Rajgadh, MP), Arun Singh, 51 (Ludhiyana Punjab), Charanjit Singh 42 (New Delhi),Ashok Kumar , 45 (Ludhiyana Punjab), Abdul Rahim,54 ( Mahipalpur), Manish Kumar Malhotra (Ludhiyana, Punjab), Rajib Mewade, 30 (Rajgadh, Madhya Pradesh), Ramchandra Sharma 48( Rajsthan), all Indian national. A Nepali accomplish who helped them in providing logistic services was also arrested in this connection.
A special team of police dispatched from Kathmandu District Police Range acting upon a tip off, raided a private residence at Dhobikhola Corridor, Ratopul area of Kathmandu Metropolitan City War No. 9 on Wednesday and rescued 11 Indian nationals who were taken as hostage in the pretext of sending them to USA via Mexico.
The Indian mafia took them from various parts of the country including Punjab and Delhi and locked them in a rented house belonging to Alka Bajaj, a Nepali national, in Kathmandu by charging millions of rupees with assurance to facilitate them to reach the USA, said Kathmandu District Police chief Senior Superintendent of Police Bhupendra Bahadur Khatri during a press meet here in Kathmandu on Thursday. The agents charged the Indian nationals, mostly students, Rs. 4.5 million per person with the false promise of sending to USA and additional US dollar 3,000 were charged as visa fee upon their arrival here in Kathmandu, he said.
Legal action will be take against the accused people, under abduction, taking hostage and human trafficking cases as per Nepalese law, he added. The freed Indians are now staying in a hotel in Kathmandu as per the arrangements made by Nepal Police and they will be sent back to India coordinating with Indian Embassy, Foreign Ministry and other concerned bodies, he informed.
The hostages were staying in the rented house in Dhobikhola for more than two weeks. They have been mentally and physically tortured, threatened and locked in the rooms. They were out of contact from the house for up to two weeks. Some of them were told to contact their family in India and assured that they were safe and on the way to USA in knife-point, one of the victims told PTI.
All the documents including visa and boarding passes were forged to show their family members. The police have recovered passports of the victims, fake rubber stamps and other forged documents from the site. “The operation has been named as “Dunki operation” as the case depicts similar situation shown in Sharukh Khan’s movie Dun Ki,” said the police.
