2 held after locals suspect them as traffickers

Police arrested two persons who were allegedly trying to traffick a woman at Madhabpur in South 24 Parganas on Friday. A few villagers reportedly caught them while they were committing the crime. They were taken to the police station where they were arrested.

Lalu Bera and Bhabataran Dhara, the two accused, were trying to traffic a woman on the pretext of providing her a job. But villagers suspected that those

people were actually trying to sell the woman to some other person.

"We caught the two men and called up the police. Later, police also learnt that those men were traffickers," said a local resident. However, police started an investigation after interrogating the culprits.

Last week, South 24 Parganas District Police arrested a woman on charges of trafficking. The woman was arrested from Delhi. Anju Biwi (56), the accused, allegedly sold a woman in a red-light area there and had also confined her child. Later, the woman managed to inform about her location to her family at South 24 Parganas' Canning. A police team rescued the woman and her child from there.

After that incident, the investigators started rampant raids across South 24 Parganas to identify such traffickers. While the cops got many important leads regarding traffickers, they were

reported on Friday that villagers caught two men who were allegedly trying to traffick a woman.

The local residents of Madhabpur were visibly happy after catching the culprits. "We were doubtful about their approach. They could not answer properly when we asked them about the woman. Later, we caught the men and called up the police," said another local resident.

Several cases of trafficking, in the recent past, were reported from Bengal. Newborn trafficking cases were also reported from hospitals wherein, Kolkata Police and Siliguri Police recently rescued girls from the grip

of traffickers.