The agents of Udai Pratap Singh, the 44-year-old leader of the group, allegedly brought children - below the ages of 10 - from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat into Bengaluru, after which they were allotted to fraud couples.
A Special Investigation Team formulated to probe child trafficking in Bengaluru has busted an International racket arresting the group's kingpin and his 16 accomplices.
The Bengaluru Police had been probing the case for over a year based on credible intelligence about a possible child trafficking racket operating in the city, said Harishekharan, the Additional Commissioner of Police. A Special Investigation Team or SIT was then constituted to gather more intelligence.
According to the police, the agents of Udai Pratap Singh, the 44-year-old leader of the group, allegedly brought children - below the ages of 10 - from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat into Bengaluru, after which they were allotted to fraud couples and made to act like a family. Travel papers to the US were then arranged for them through the US Consulate in Chennai by producing fake documents.
An audit into immigration of the two countries revealed that the couples would then travel to the US with the children and return later leaving them behind. According to the investigations, the syndicate has been successful in allegedly smuggling over 25 children into the United States for crores of rupees.
The accused in the initial interrogation have said that they handed over the kids to their biological parents in the US who have been living there illegally. However, an alternate theory of the police suggests that the children were kidnapped from India and then sold in the US, making it an International child trafficking racket.
13 cases of kidnaping, abduction, criminal conspiracy, violations of various passport and visa acts have been registered against the gang. Police say that it will need more time to conclusively ascertain the motive behind the alleged trafficking of the children.