By IANS,
Raipur: A human-trafficking bid was foiled in Chhattisgarh with 35 workers, majority of them minors, rescued from a Odisha-bound private bus, a police official said Thursday.
“Police rescued about three dozen labourers from the clutches of agents from an Odisha-bound bus Wednesday. Four people have been arrested in this connection,” Bastar Superintendent of Police Badri Narayan Meena told IANS.
Acting on an information, police stopped a bus belonging to a private operator at Nagarnar in Bastar, about 300 km from here, and found 35 labourers, including seven minor girls, being transported allegedly to Bengaluru for work, Nagarnar police in-charge D. Banjare said.
The bus was bound to Jaypore in Odisha, he added.
Some of the workers said they were brought to work at Jagdalpur in Bastar but were being taken by the agents to Odisha from where they hoped to get transported to Babgalore.
The labourers belonged to Lohandiguda, Mardapal and surrounding areas of Bastar.
During interrogation, the agents told police that a Odisha-based contractor offered them Rs.300 for each person besides a fixed monthly salary. Earlier also they had taken people from the state to Bangalore, police said.
A 15-year-old girl from Ratenga village in Lohandiguda block of Bastar said that she along with six other minor girls from the same area were promised good jobs by the agents.