A human trafficking racket being run under the guise of an NGO organising mass marriages for women from poor families has been busted near Jaipur. The woman who ran the NGO, officials said, would 'buy' girls from agents trafficking them from poor families and 'sell' them to young men looking for a bride for Rs 2.5-5 lakh.
Officials said Gayatri Sarva Samaj Foundation had set up its office in a farmhouse in Sujanpura village of Bassi, about 30 km from Jaipur, and claimed to organise mass marriages.
Members of a gang would 'buy' girls from poor families from Bihar, West Bengal, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh and 'sell' them to Gayatri Vishwakarma, the director of the 'NGO'. Gayatri, in turn, would 'sell' these girls to young men who wanted to get married for Rs 2.5-5 lakh, said Bassi police station in-charge Abhijit Patil.
The 'price', officials said, was decided according to the girls' complexion, height and age. Gayatri would arrange fake Aadhaar cards for the minors to show that their age was over 18. She had arranged about 1,500 such marriages and had ten cases against her.
Girl Escapes
The racket was exposed when a 16-year-old girl, who was from Uttar Pradesh, escaped from the farmhouse on Sunday and approached the police. Based on the girl's statement, the police raided the farmhouse and arrested Gayatri, her associate Hanuman, and two others - identified as Bhagwan Das and Mahendra - who had gone there to 'buy' the teenager.
Villagers said all they knew about the 'NGO' was that it arranged marriages for girls from poor families and did not have more information because the farmhouse was at the edge of the village. They said another girl had escaped four months ago and tried to tell them what was happening, but they could not understand the language she was conversing in.
(With inputs from Somu Anand)
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