PALAKKAD: Medical tests on a group of minor Odisha girls rescued from Dhanbad - Alappuzha Express by railway police at Shoranur have found that they were victims of sexual abuse. Doctors at District Hospital in Palakkad conducted tests on six of the 15 children who were held on a tip-off. Police had taken into custody 36 passengers on suspicion of human trafficking on Thursday. They included women, girls and a three-year-old boy.
Five men from Jharkhand were remanded in judicial custody by a Mannarkkad court on charges of human and child trafficking. The girls did not have proper documents and were brought here as child labours. Fr Jose Paul, who heads the Child Welfare Committee in Palakkad, told DC that 15 children from Jharkhand would undergo similar tests. All of them are presently lodged in a government rescue centre at Muttikulangara in Palakkad.
“It has to be found out whether they were tortured and who did it,” he said. Investigating officer B. Santosh, a circle inspector with the railway police in Kozhikode, said both the girls and the women did not know where they were being taken, and girls possessed fake Aadhaar Cards.
The men with the team had told the police that they were being taken to a fish exporting company in Kochi for jobs, but police suspect they were brought for flesh trade among migrant workers. “We are in search of the agents who brought them here,” the CI said.
