Kochi pastor held for trafficking 12 minor girls...
A pastor from Kochi has been arrested for alleged connections with the human trafficking of minor girls, as per the officials. On Thursday the officers made the arrest and informed about the case.
The incident came out as the Railway Protection Force (RPF) personnel rescued 12 minor girls from a train. The girls were rescued from Okha-Ernakulam Express when the train reached Kozhikode railway station on Wednesday night. Upon rescuing the RPF team handed over the minor children to the child welfare committee, who later shifted the girls to an after-care home for women in Kozhikode.
The girls were allegedly being trafficked from Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, as per the officials from NGO ChildLine. The accused pastor is identified by the police as Jacob Varghese. Varghese ran an orphanage called Karuna Charitable Trust in Kochi’s Perumbavur area. The pastor has been booked under human trafficking charges (section 370) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Childline officials have said they would file another complaint against the orphanage under the Juvenile Justice Act. Some passengers and the ticket examiner tipped off the RPF after which the arrest was made, told a ChildLine official.
District Child welfare committee Chairman P Abdul Nasar on the matter said, “Among the rescued children, 11 belong to Banswara region in Rajasthan and one girl is from Madhya Pradesh. All the children are in the 9-12 age group and most of them have no identification cards. They were tired and scared”.
Nasar informed that four men were travelling along with the children and one of them claimed to be the father of one of the girls. Out of these four people, three have been nabbed including an agent identified as Lokesh Kumar, according to the police.
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