In ‘Op Dunki’, Nepal police bust trafficking racket, free 11 Indian hostages

Eleven Indian nationals, mostly students, held hostage for over two weeks with a promise to facilitate travel to the USA, were rescued as Nepal police busted a human trafficking racket and arrested eight Indian mafia members along with their Nepali accomplice here.

Nepal police named it ‘Operation Dunki’ as the case turned out to be similar to the situation shown in popular Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan’s 2023 movie Dunki. The rescued persons and mafia members came mostly from the Indian states of Punjab and Haryana.

The 11 persons were kept as hostages in a rented house for more than two weeks on the outskirts of Kathmandu, police said on Thursday.

The Kathmandu District Police Range team carried out the operation starting Wednesday night and the raid continued till the wee hours.

Acting on a tip-off, raided a private residence belonging to a Nepali national at Dhobikhola Corridor, Ratopul, and rescued the 11 Indian nationals, who were taken hostage in the pretext of sending them to the USA via Mexico.

The agents, including the Indian mafia members, charged the Indian nationals, mostly students, Rs 4.5 million per person with the false promise of sending to the USA, and an additional USD 3,000 was charged as a visa fee upon their arrival here in Kathmandu, District Police chief Senior Superintendent of Police Bhupendra Bahadur Khatri told a press meet here.

Cases would be booked against each of the accused under sections pertaining to abduction, taking hostage, and human trafficking as per the Nepalese law, he said, adding, that a Nepali accomplice, who helped them in providing logistic services, was also arrested.

The freed Indians are staying at a hotel in Kathmandu as per the arrangements made by Nepal Police and they will be sent back to India coordinating with the Indian Embassy, Foreign Ministry, and other officials concerned, the police chief said.

When the hostages stayed at the rented house for more than two weeks, they were mentally and physically tortured, threatened, and locked in the rooms, he said.

“Some of us were told, on a knife-point, to contact our family in India to assure them that we were safe and on the way to USA,” one of the rescued persons told PTI.

All the documents, including visa and boarding passes, were forged while the police have recovered the passports of the victims along with fake rubber stamps and other forged documents from the site, Khatri said