2 nabbed at airport in suspected case of human trafficking

In a suspected case of human trafficking, a man and a woman, posing as a couple, were apprehended at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA) after their plan to travel to Toronto allegedly on fake papers was unsuccessful.

The incident was reported around 3 am at a foreign airline counter on Terminal-III. The officials informed the CISF security personnel that two Toronto-bound passengers went missing after handing over their check-in baggage, but without collecting their boarding passes. 

The ticket manager had raised some queries about their passports. Teams of the CISF initiated a search for the two and footage from 3,000 cameras was scanned, following which the duo was seen coming out from a toilet, after changing their clothes and subsequently boarding a flight to Pune. They had apparently sensed that they would not be able to travel to Toronto, officials said.

They said CISF sleuths tried to get the passengers deboard from the Pune-bound plane, but by then the flight had already hit the runway. The CISF, then, alerted their Pune unit, who intercepted them as soon as they landed.

Meanwhile, a bomb squad was called in at the IGIA to scan the two baggages that the two, booked as Amit R Chavan and Sheetal A Chavan, had left at the airline counter.

Officials said they disclosed to CISF personnel at Pune that they were not married and were allegedly trying to emigrate to Toronto using fake passports whose authenticity was doubted by the airlines staff. Sensing trouble they slipped into the domestic terminal and got flight tickets to Pune.

“The two were later identified as Ahmedabad based K Patel and M Patel and they were handed over to immigration authorities in Delhi. It looks to be a suspected case of human trafficking,”

they said. It was later found that an agent, who had allegedly helped the duo in preparing fake travel papers, was present in the terminal area on the pretext of taking a flight.