Kolkata: Five men were arrested after a minor West Bengal girl who had been missing for two years was traced to Pali in Rajasthan by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), police said.
“On the basis of information received from sources and analysing call detail records (CDR), leads were obtained that the victim might have been sent to Pali in Rajasthan. A team went to Pali and rescued the girl from a house on Friday,” the CBI said in a statement on Saturday.
The girl, who went missing from East Burdwan district, was allegedly sold twice for marriage after being shown as an adult in affidavits, an officer said.
According to CBI officers, this could be part of a larger human trafficking racket.
The Calcutta High Court handed over the case to the federal agency on February 8, 2024, after finding “laxity and lacuna” on the part of the local police and the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID).
“The court was told that two persons, who were arrested by the local police, were granted statutory bail because they were political functionaries of the ruling dispensation and were close to certain politically influential persons,” said a lawyer aware of the developments.
The accused allegedly threatened the family and offered money to withdraw the case. They were told that the girl had been sold off.
“Considering the exigency, the inability of the CID to trace out the girl in a span of one month after so much time had been wasted by the local police, and considering the fact that the investigation into the case may require seeking inter-state or even inter-country assistance, the investigation of the case is forthwith transferred to the CBI,” a bench of Justice Jay Sengupta of the Calcutta High Court stated in its order of February 8, 2024.
The CBI registered a case on February 16, 2024. Investigations revealed that the girl went missing on her way to tuition classes.
“The investigating agency (CID) ought to have utilised the time they got for investigating the matter further, as for instance to send the photographs of the victim to the nearby states, inform the Ministry of Home Affairs and seek necessary help in this regard, and even contact the law enforcement agencies of the neighbouring country through proper channel. A narco-analysis test of the arrested accused could have been prayed for. The miscreants who subsequently threatened the family could have been interrogated,” the court had said in its February 8 order.