Image for Rep purpose only
The RPF claims that when enquired, the children and the five men said they were headed to Sangli and Pune, where the children were to be enrolled in madrasas.
A court in Manmad, Nashik, on Monday denied bail to four of the five men who were arrested by the Government Railway Police on May 30 on charges of alleged child trafficking and sent them to judicial custody. The fifth accused was sent to judicial custody by a court in Bhusawal (Jalgaon) last week.
The five men, teachers at two madrasas in Pune and Sangli, were arrested on board a train in which they were travelling with 59 children from Bihar’s Araria district.
The 59 “rescued” children — in the age group of eight to 17 — have been lodged in shelter homes in Nashik and Bhusawal (Jalgaon) for the past 12 days.
While the GRP accused the five of child trafficking, the parents of the children said they had sent them willingly.
On May 30, acting on information that a number of children were allegedly being trafficked for child labour, officials of the RPF searched the Danapur-Pune Express train at Bhusawal, where they found 29 children in coaches S-10 and S-11. The children were handed over to the GRP, and Mohammed Anjur Alam, a resident of Sangli who was accompanying them, was arrested.
The train was again searched when it reached Manmad station (Nashik), where the RPF “rescued” 30 children from coaches S-1, S-2, S-10 and S-11 along with four men accompanying them – Saddam Hussain Siddiqui, 23, Noman Alam Siddiqui, 28, Ezaj Ziyabbul Siddiqui, 40, and Mohammed Shahnawaz Haroon, 22 – all hailing from Bihar’s Araria.
The RPF claims that when enquired, the children and the five men said they were headed to Sangli and Pune, where the children were to be enrolled in madrasas. The RPF, however, said the five men could not furnish any documentary proof of parental consent. Subsequently, they were handed over to the GRP, who filed two FIRs against them under Sections 370 (buying or disposing of any person as slave) and 34 (criminal act done in furtherance of the common intention of all) of the IPC.
