Bolangir: Cracking down against labour traffickers, Odisha police have arrested a middleman and have rescued 19 labourers including seven females and three minors from Nagpur in Maharashtra.
The labourers hail from Bolangir district and they were being trafficked to a brick kiln in Telangana Wednesday.
The alleged trafficker has been identified as Riksa Muduli.
According to police officials, acting on a tip-off, a special joint operation was carried out by the DIG of Police Himanshu Kumar Lal in coordination with the GRP in Maharashtra. The joint team successfully managed to arrest Muduli at Nagpur railway station and rescue the labourers. Muduli and the laborers were waiting to board a different train to Telangana at the time of arrest, police said.
Further investigation into the incident is on.
According to one of the labourers, they had borrowed a sum of Rs 10,000 each from Muduli ahead of Dasahara and had agreed to accompany him to the worksite after the festival. However, the labourers soon discovered that the particular worksite in Telangana that they had signed up for was notorious for ill-treating labourers. Subsequently, they decided to return the borrowed amount to Muduli but he refused.