Sources suggest that the probe might be linked to his business of sending workers overseas to countries like Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
Photo: ANI/Representative
A National Investigation Agency (NIA) team raided the house of a labour contractor in the industrial town of Durgapur in West Bengal in the early hours of Monday over his suspected links to human trafficking.
The six-member team was led by a Deputy Superintendent. Police were deployed around the house to provide security for the investigating officials. While the exact reason behind the raid have not yet been disclosed, sources suggest that the probe might be linked to his business of sending workers overseas to countries like Malaysia and Saudi Arabia.
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The contractor’s residence is located in the Steel Park locality of the city, within Ward 13 of the municipal area adjacent to SAIL’s Durgapur Steel Plant. The accused, Golam Jamar originally hailed from Chhattisgarh.
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One of Jamar’s neighbour, Shamim Alam, said, “He served as a contractor with a company in Malaysia for about six months. Then he returned and settled in our locality as a tenant with his family four years ago. He always maintained a distance from local residents and rarely spoke to them.”
Another neighbour, Salauddin Ansari, said, “We heard about his involvement in sending labourers to Malaysia and some Gulf countries through a travel agency in Chhattisgarh, where the investigators found his links to preparing counterfeit passports for the purpose of supplying labour within the country and abroad.”
The NIA team, accompanied by a woman officer, conducted a search for over an hour and questioned Jamar and his wife before taking him into custody.
The central anti-terror agency has slapped charges of fraudulent emigration, human trafficking, criminal breach of trust and dishonest delivery of property against the labour contractor arrested by the sleuths from the steel city this morning. The team produced Jama before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court, Durgapur pleading for a transit remand this afternoon.
The NIA’s petition mentioned charges of human trafficking, criminal breach of trust, cheating and dishonestly delivery of property and criminal intimidation [under Sections- 143(2), 316 (2), 318 (4), 35 (2) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023], which also accommodated Section 24 of the Emigration Act, 1983 that prescribes penal measures against fraudulent emigration practices of attempting to leave India dishonouring the specific sections, forging documents and certificates to prepare counterfeit passports, deceiving the emigrants and charging exorbitant fees.
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