A 43-year-old man allegedly trafficked a 17-year-old girl from West Bengal to Mumbai under the pretext of helping her meet Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan. Railway cops rescued the teenager after she arrived at Dadar Terminus with the alleged trafficker. She was sent to a shelter home while the trafficker, identified as Subhan Shaikh, was arrested.
As per reports, the minor girl, a student of Class 12, is a resident of Palashipara in West Bengal. Shaikh (43), a resident of Mira Road in Maharashtra, had befriended her through Facebook by pretending to be a young event manager. The 43-year-old had used his son’s photo as his display picture on the social media platform.
After connecting on Facebook, the two began conversing regularly. The accused offered the girl help to meet Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan at his residence in Bandra in Mumbai. He told her that he would escort her to Mumbai. He, however, knew that the girl would refuse to go to Mumbai once it was revealed that he wasn’t the youth she had been in touch with. Therefore, he cooked up a story. He told her that he had contracted COVID-19 infection, so his father would be escorting her to Mumbai.
On July 15, Shaikh arrived in Palashipara. The teenager did not suspect anything amiss. “He picked her up from her coaching class, destroyed her Sim card in her mobile phone to prevent her location from being tracked and brought her to Kolkata. From there, they boarded the Howrah Mail to Mumbai,” a report by The Times of India quoted Dadar GRP’s senior inspector Dnyaneshwar Katkar as saying.
Meanwhile, the minor girl’s parents flared up in a search for her. After failing to find her, they knocked on the doors of West Bengal Police for help. Police immediately sprang up in action. All railway stations were alerted. The girl was caught on CCTV boarding a train from Howrah Junction. Mumbai GRP was informed as CSMT was the train’s last station.
“The girl was wearing a mask so we couldn’t see her face. Based on her description, our team intercepted her and Shaikh on Sunday. When she took off the mask we were able to verify her identity,” said Dadar GRP’s inspector Avinash Powar.
Subsequently, the railway cops rescued the girl and took Shaikh into custody. She was shifted to a shelter home. On Tuesday, West Bengal Police officials arrived in Mumbai to take the girl home. Her alleged trafficker was also handed over to West Bengal Police officials for investigation. Shaikh’s intention behind bringing the minor girl to the Maharashtra capital is yet to be known.