CHITTOOR: SEPTEMBER 1: Chittoor Superintendent of Police, Mr Ghattamaneni Srinivas and Additional SP (Operations) Mr. Y. Ratna led a special team on the night of 30 August arrested a two-member gang involved in trafficking of women to foreign countries, at Dasukuppam in Satyavedu mandal at the Tamil Nadu border. Nearly 150 women were reportedly trafficked by the two in five years from various parts of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to South East Asian countries and Dubai. Additional SP Mr. Y. Ratna told the press that the two were arrested after one month of surveillance. Recently a woman victim in Satyavedu who had escaped from the clutches of a brothel house in Malaysia approached the Chittoor SP, who in turn formed the special party to look into the gang’s operations. The nabbed duo were identified as A. Rafi (41), the inter-state gang leader, and his agent Pandiya Rajan (38). Rafi is from Kodizhaivur locality of Chennai. In the last 20 years, he was an agent with a travels company in Chennai, and later himself turned into a travel agent, providing visas and assisting customers for passports and flight tickets. Rafi developed intimacy with a brothel house woman operator Dhanu in Malaysia five years ago. With the help of Dhanu, Rafi formed a network of agents all over Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, and started sending young women luring them with lucrative jobs in foreign countries. Dhanu kept receiving the women and forcing them into flesh trade. She used to send money to Rafi in India through hawala mode. Nearly 19 agents under the Rafi-Dhanu network were identified, and special teams were formed to nab them, police investigations say. ]]>
