The Special Court for NIA Cases in Hyderabad has convicted and sentenced nine accused, including eight Bangladeshi nationals, to life imprisonment in a 2019 human trafficking case involving Bangladeshi women who were trafficked into India and subsequently forced into prostitution.

According to the National Investigation Agency (NIA), the special court, in its order passed on September 17, also imposed a total fine of Rs 1,37,000 on the convicted accused. It further awarded three months of simple imprisonment in default of payment of the fine.

The case pertains to a human trafficking network that trafficked Bangladeshi women into India by luring them with promises of lucrative employment and decent wages, before forcing them into prostitution.

The original case was registered by the Telangana Police at Pahadi Shareef Police Station in Hyderabad following an operation in September 2019. During the operation, three Bangladeshi women were rescued from a brothel being operated in Jalpally village, while another woman was rescued from a house in Mahimood Colony, Balapur, Hyderabad.

The NIA subsequently took over the investigation and re-registered the case on October 12, 2019, as RC-03/2019/NIA/HYD.

During the investigation, the involvement of the accused in the trafficking network was established. The NIA subsequently filed a chargesheet against 12 accused, including absconding accused A1, A3 and A7, on October 17, 2020.

The accused were arrested from different locations, including West Bengal and Telangana, during 2019 and 2020.

The accused sentenced by the court were Ruhul Amin Dhali (A2), Mohd Yousuf Khan alias Md Imran (A4), Bithi Begum alias Khadija Shaik (A5), Imamul Ghazi alias Mohd Rana Hussain (A6), Mohammed Al Mamun (A8), Sojib Shaik (A9), Suresh Kumar Das alias Sagor (A10), Mohd Abdulla Munshi alias Abdul Sarkar (A11) and Mohd Ayub Shaik (A12).

They were prosecuted under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the Foreigners Act, 1946, and the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956.