The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been unable to file a chargesheet in the case. (Representational) The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been unable to file a chargesheet in the case. (Representational) Eight months after arresting three agents who are alleged to have trafficked 25 boys from Punjab and Haryana to France, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has been unable to file a chargesheet in the case. The “kabutarbaazi” case first came to light in February 2016 when the French authorities picked up two of the boys, who had no travel documents, and deported them. The whereabouts of the remaining boys is not known, except that 18 were from Punjab and the rest from Haryana and Delhi. They were in the age group of 13-18 years. A senior officer at CBI in New Delhi, where the case was registered on December 28, 2017, told The Indian Express that the chargesheet had been filed in this case and the other boys remained untraced. “Forged documents were used to transport them by travel agents. Even the families of the boys have not complained that their sons are missing,” he said. “In this case, the parents themselves connived with the travel agents as they wanted to send their children abroad by hook and crook and paid hefty amounts ranging from Rs 27-30 lakh per boy to get them into Paris,” the CBI officer said. CBI’s Chief Information Officer Abhishek Dyal, when contacted, said the case was still under investigation and much details cannot be shared about it at the moment. CBI had arrested three agents, one from Faridabad and two from Delhi, Lalit David, Sanjiv Raj and Varun Chaudhary, who had returned to India after dropping off the boys in France. They also cancelled the return tickets that had been booked for the boys. The boys were taken to Paris in the garb of a Rugby team on February 1, 2016, and were left there by the agents. But there were no complaints from the parents of the boys. It was only when the Paris police alerted CBI that the case came to its notice. The officials said forged letterheads of two Kapurthala-based schools were used by these agents to show while applying for a SCHENGEN visa at the French Embassy that the boys were studying at these schools. But the CBI established during the investigation that the boys had never studied at these schools. “Even we were surprised when CBI team contacted us and asked about the details of the boys who were shown as our students,” said a representative of the school at Begowal in Kapurthala. The agents showed 17 students from this school at the time of seeking visa. “Even agents Sanjeev Raj and Varun Chaudhary were shown as employees in our school, and remaining students were shown as the students of Kapurthala’s Ajit Nagar based school where too agents Lalit David and Gurwinder Singh Bajwa were shown as employees of school,” the representative said. They had shown that boys were invited for the tournament by French Rugby Federation from January 31, 2016, to February 10, 2016. The French Embassy had detected the racket around the same time, and complained to CBI on February 9, 2016, following which CBI began investigations. The CBI officer, who wished not to be quoted, said that one of the two deported boys was caught without legal documents at a railway station in Paris and the other had gone to police himself. The two boys were identified as Palwant Singh and Mandeep Singh. Start your day the best way with the Express Morning Briefing For all the latest Chandigarh News, download Indian Express App

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