Fourth case against gang of 5 for human smuggling

Our Correspondent

Tarn Taran, June 4

The police registered one more case under the Prevention of Human Smuggling Act and other relevant sections of law against a gang of five accused of collecting crores of rupees from innocent victims. This is the fourth case that has been registered against the gang members.

Fifteen more complaints are under investigation against the gang. The complainants of all four cases registered against the gang members are of Raishiana village. The latest case was registered on Saturday on the complaint of one Jaswinder Singh.

The accused have been identified as Sandeep Singh, his wife Kirandeep Kaur, mother Pritam Kaur Prito and father Salwinder Singh of Bhail Dhae wala. The gang was being run with the active connivance of Sanni Kumar, alias Sanni, a resident of Indonesia, who is a Hoshiarpur native.

The people who came under their allurement have been identified as Sukhjinder Singh, Jaswinder Singh, Navdeep Singh and Prabhdeep Singh. The relatives of Sukhjinder, Jaswinder and Navdeep had transferred Rs 45 lakh each to the gang. Similarly, Rs 40 lakh were transferred by the relatives of Prabhdeep to their bank account.

SSP Gurmeet Chauhan said one of the accused, Salwinder Singh, had been arrested and raids were being conducted on the possible hideouts of the remaining accused. Cases under Sections 420, 406, 506, 370 and 120-B of the IPC and Section 13 of the Punjab Prevention of Human Smuggling Act have been registered against the accused. The SSP said inquiry regarding the other complaints against the accused would be completed shortly and cases would be registered.

Modus operandi of accused

The gang members would lure innocent people with the offer of sending them to the US or UK. However, the victims would be sent to Delhi or Indonesia and allegedly tortured. They were kept in confinement and forced to call their families and tell them that they had safely reached the US/UK. Later, the gang members would make the victims’ kin transfer huge amounts of money to their bank accounts as fee for helping the victims reach abroad.