Grocery shop owner turns top human trafficker: Rab arrests 8
Rab arrested eight persons on charge of involvement in human trafficking and swindling people out of lakhs in the name of providing jobs abroad.
A Rab team raided three recruiting agency offices -- owned by the same person -- in Dhaka's Badda area early today and arrested the eight along with 10 passports, cheques of different banks and other documents, Mozammel Haque, commanding officer of Rab-4, told a press briefing at Rab media centre.
Rab said they conducted the drive as families of several victims told them that their loved ones cannot be traced since they were sent abroad.
The arrestees are: Saiful Islam alias Tutul (38), Toiyob Ali (45), Jalal Uddin Limon (38), Maruf Hasan (37), Jahangir Alam (38), Laltu Islam (28), Alamin Hossain (30), and Abdullah Al Mamun (54).
The Rab CO said Tutul has turned out to be one of the top human traffickers over the years. He started out with a grocery shop in Meherpur's Gangni upazila after completing SSC.
Driven by greed, he visited Dhaka several times, met human traffickers, and started sending people abroad though them, he said.
Later, Tutul established the three recruiting agencies in Badda -- Tutul Overseas, Limon Overseas and Loyal Overseas -- and swindled huge sums of money from people in the name of sending them abroad and providing jobs, the Rab CO said.
Mozammel said insolvent and unemployed men and women were the group's targets. They used to take Tk 2-5 lakh from each.
Apart from collecting their passports, the group used to give them trainings, and conduct false medical tests to convince them further.
Once the procedures were done, the group trafficked the victims to Jordan, Libya, Saudi Arabia and other countries, Mozammel said, adding that they were tortured into illegal and backbreaking work.
One Ashraful Islam from Gaibandha complained to Rab that Tutul and Toiyub sent his niece to Jordan on June 9 this year. They were able to contact her for one week only. Since then she could not be traced, Rab said.
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