Staff Reporter :
Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has arrested eight members of a human trafficking gang from Dhaka and Brahmanbaria conducting a couple of raids.
A N M Imran Khan, Assistant Superintendent of Police and Assistant Director (Legal and Media Wing) of RAB, confirmed the matter to the media on Saturday. The arrestees were identified as Nayeem Khan alias Lotus (31), ringleader Nure Alam Shahrier (32), Rimon Sarker (25), Golam Mostafa Sumon (40) Badrul Islam (37), Khorshed Alam (28), Sohel (27) and Habib (39).
During the drive, RAB officials also recovered 14 passports and 14 fake clearance cards of Bureau of Manpower, Employment and Training (BMET) from their possessions.
At the press conference, RAB-3 officials said that some of the victims complained to RAB that a group tried to send them to a Middle Eastern country on travel visa. For this, the racket provided them fake exit clearance. Members of the Bureau of Manpower Employment and Training on duty at the airport seized the fake clearance while victims tried to going abroad.
As a result, their foreign trip was postponed. Eight people have so bar been arrested on the basis of these allegations.
Based on the information obtained from the detainees during interrogation, RAB officials said that Naeem Khan is the head of the human trafficking ring, he is a Dubai expatriate. He came to Bangladesh in May this year.
He took several Bangladeshis to Dubai in tourist visas upon receiving Tk 2-3 lakh from each.
Though some of the victims could manage jobs, most of them have been living inhumane lives without any works, the RAB CO said.
“Thus, he has trafficked more than 500 victims to Dubai in seven years,” the RAB official said the other arrestees are his partners.
With the money Nayeem earned from trafficking, he obtained the approval of his own business establishment in Dubai and residence visa, RAB officials said.
