Indian police have reportedly broken up an alleged human trafficking ring which transported young boys to France – on the pretext of sending them on rugby tours.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) have arrested 3 men, after they allegedly tricked the families of 25 children into sending them to France for what they said was a “rugby camp”.
Once in France in early 2016, the boys were reportedly taken to a gurudwara, a Sikh temple, in Paris and stripped of their passports.
The case apparently only came to light this year after 2 of the boys escaped and another was found by French police, who passed word of the trafficking ring to Interpol, the global policing body.
The fate of the other 22 boys still remains unclear and it is feared they may have been shipped outside of France.
“It is still unknown where in France or Europe those 22 remaining kids are. They might have been sold to someone or put in some job,” CBI official told the Times of India.
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The boys, who are aged between 13 and 18, were drawn mainly from two schools in Kapurthala, a city in Punjab in northern India.
The alleged traffickers drew up fake invitations from the French Rugby Federation to convince the children’s parents, police noted.
They also reportedly organised an actual rugby training session in India to give the scheme some authenticity.
The families were reportedly charged Rs 25 lakh to Rs 30 lakh (+-3700) each for the trip, said Abhishek Dayal, a CBI spokesman.
It is unclear how the children could have been missing for more than a year without the alarm being publicly raised earlier.
Police named the three arrested men as Lalit David Dean, of Faridabad, and Sanjeev Raj and Varun Choudhary from Delhi. These are the first arrests in the case, but others are said to follow.
Indian police tried to track the parents of the missing children and Interpol is attempting to trace their route after their arrival in Paris.
“It was also alleged that the visas in respect of said students were obtained from the French Embassy at Delhi on the basis of forged and fabricated documents,” the CBI said.