A special court handling National Investigation Agency (NIA) cases in Hyderabad has sentenced nine accused persons to life imprisonment in a human trafficking case from 2019. The case involved eight Bangladeshi nationals and one Indian national who were found guilty of trafficking women from Bangladesh into India and forcing them into prostitution.
The court passed its order on September 17, 2026, and imposed a total fine of ₹1,37,000 on the convicts. Those who fail to pay the fine will undergo an additional three months of simple imprisonment. The trafficking network allegedly lured Bangladeshi women to India with false promises of lucrative employment opportunities and decent wages before forcing them into the flesh trade.
The original case was registered by Telangana Police at Pahadi Shareef Police Station following a rescue operation conducted in September 2019. During the operation, three Bangladeshi women were rescued from a brothel in Jalpally, while another woman was rescued from a house in Mahimood Colony, Balapur, Hyderabad. The rescued victims were provided necessary assistance and protection.
The NIA took over the investigation and established the involvement of multiple accused persons in the trafficking network. The agency filed a chargesheet against 12 accused on October 17, 2020. At the time of filing the chargesheet, three of the accused designated as A1, A3 and A7 were absconding. The accused were arrested from different locations in Telangana and West Bengal during 2019 and 2020.
The nine persons convicted in the case are Ruhul Amin Dhali (A2), Mohd Yousuf Khan alias Md Imran (A4), Bithi Begum alias Khadija Shaik (A5), Imamul Ghazi alias Mohd Rana Hussain (A6), Mohammed Al Mamun (A8), Sojib Shaik (A9), Suresh Kumar Das alias Sagor (A10), Mohd Abdulla Munshi alias Abdul Sarkar (A11) and Mohd Ayub Shaik (A12). The convicts include both men and women who played different roles in the trafficking network.
The accused were prosecuted under various provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Foreigners Act, 1946, and the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956. The convictions mark a significant step in combating human trafficking networks operating across international borders and exploiting vulnerable women through false promises of employment.
