The detention of an Indian teenager in Paris has blown the lid off an international human trafficking racket in India which allegedly sent a group of 25 boys, mainly from Punjab-Haryana region to France.
CBI says the group went to Paris in February 2016 following their visa approval from French embassy based on fraudulent documents.
The boys aged between 13 and 18 visited Paris to attend international rugby training for seven days.
After this brief session, they were dumped in a local Gurudwara and their return tickets were cancelled.
The investigations surfaced after French police scrutinised one of the boys planning to return to India.
On the tip of French Police, CBI registered a case against three trafficking agents - Lalit David Dean, Sanjeev Raj and Varun Choudhary who are based in Delhi and Faridabad on 28th December.
CBI accuses they collected 25 to 30 lakh (app $50K to 60K) to send these boys to France.
“Questioning of the three accused is on and the laptops are being scrutinised,” said a CBI official.
“French visas for the kids were obtained on the basis of an alleged invitation received from the ‘French Federation’ in Paris. All of them visited Paris ... Thereafter the agents got their return tickets cancelled. But before this two boys sensed something wrong and managed to return,” said a CBI spokesperson.
Investigations further revealed the missing boys were shown as students of two schools in Kapurthala, Punjab. However, the schools told CBI none of the boys studied in Kapurthala.
