The operation got underway, according to Assam Special DGP Harmeet Singh, after police in the Karimganj district of the state discovered a group of Rohingya citizens riding a train that was departing from Tripura.
44 people were arrested on Wednesday as a result of the National Investigation Agency’s early-morning raid to disrupt “illegal human trafficking and support systems,” which enable immigration via the Bangladesh-India border.
With support from the Border Security Force and state police forces, the central agency apprehended 21 individuals from Tripura, 10 from Karnataka, 5 from Assam, 3 from West Bengal, 2 from Tamil Nadu, and 1 from each of Haryana, Telangana, and Puducherry.
Assam Special DGP Harmeet Singh told the media that the police in Assam’s Karimganj district, which borders Bangladesh, discovered a group of Rohingya individuals traveling in a train that was departing from Tripura. This discovery marked the beginning of the operation. He claimed that after investigation, it was discovered that they were “infiltrating” the nation by way of the border between Bangladesh and India.
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Following that, we stepped up our watch and operations, and with the help of border guarding personnel, 450 illegal migrants—a mix of Bangladeshis and Rohingya—were stopped and turned back. Following an increase in inquiries and interrogations, it was discovered that middlemen and touts were facilitating and running the illegal movement. Not only have they been discovered here, but also in Bangladesh and several regions of mainland India, the speaker stated.
He stated that the matter was found to be a concern for national security with interstate consequences. Because of the matter, the Assam government requested that the Union Ministry of Home Affairs forward cases to the NIA.
The NIA said in a statement that it had registered three new cases in Chennai, Bengaluru, and Jaipur after its investigations into this case revealed various modules of an illegal human trafficking network that were “responsible for the infiltration and settlement of illegal migrants across the border into India” and were spread across multiple states. The arrests were made on Wednesday after simultaneous raids across 55 locations, according to the NIA.
The accused persons who have been detained will appear before the appropriate jurisdictional courts. The entire ecosystem of these networks would continue to be dismantled by additional inquiries into the operations and practices of these illicit human trafficking networks, according to the NIA.