Twenty five teenage boys from Nepal, who were being taken to Sikkim by a gang of traffickers for forced labour, have been rescued by Indian police in Darjeeling, India.

“We had received information on a possible case of trafficking, and so the bus in which these boys were being taken was intercepted. In the raid, we found 25 boys from Nepal being taken to Gangtok by three traffickers,” Indian daily The Hindu said quoting Kunal Agarwal, the Superintendent of Police of Darjeeling district, as saying. They were rescued recently.

The boys did not know where they were being taken, the report said.

“The three persons accompanying them claim to run a placement agency, for which they had recruited them. All three of them are Bengalis. We are trying to find out the remaining persons who may have been involved in the operations,” Agarwal informed, adding, “We are working with the West Bengal police to see if we can find out the operatives of this gang in Sikkim,” said Jasbir Singh, the Director General of Police of Sikkim.

According to Singh, Sikkim police frequently come across cases of girls from the State being trafficked to different parts of the country. nepalnews.com