By Express News Service HYDERABAD: Hyderabad is not new to child trafficking rackets. Shockingly, the case history of one such racket, operated by ‘kingpin’ Gangadhar Reddy, shows how law enforcement agencies have not been able to end their trail of trafficking despite having arrested them multiple times over a period of four years. The alleged kingpin Gangadhar Reddy and his associate V Babu Reddy were arrested in the first week of February this year by a joint team of Cyberabad Police at Alwal, when their brokers were in the process of selling new-born baby for a sum of Rs 7 lakh. The infant was procured from its parents residing at a remote village in Warangal. In fact, Gangadhar Reddy’s name appears in at least five other police stations on charges of kidnap and others. He had brokered one such deal on October 30, 2017, at Madannapet, after which an FIR was lodged against his broker. The broker had lured a new mother into selling her baby girl. The police caught the broker and traced the racket all the way to Gangadhar. This was the first time that he was caught. The scope of his network was such that another racket leading up to him surfaced in Chatrinaka in November 2017, just weeks after his arrest and subsequent release. Soon, he was arrested again. Over the next the years, three more rackets under the RGI Airport police limits, Chandrayangutta and Alwal were traced back to him. The accused had multiple lines of brokers working across the city to make the deals for him. “The gang has been operating since 2016. Every kingpin has brokers under him, who in turn have lines of workers attached to them. "They work continuously in making deals happen,” said Balanagar DCP PV Padmaja, who had led the latest operation against the gang. The police, in these cases, had invoked IPC Section 363 for kidnapping, in addition to Section 80,81 of the JJ Act for sale of children. Both these are bailable offences warranting very little jail time of up to 3 years. When Gangadhar Reddy and his gang were caught in 2019 by the Chandrayangutta police, he served merely 14 days in jail. Soon afterwards, he restarted the trade. The police, however, are mulling to invoke the PD Act for such offences. They have already added Section 370 of the IPC to the present case to fetch the culprits a non-bailable and stricter punishment.

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