Rajen Mahali. Picture by Subhash Chandra Bose

Malda/Jaigaon, April 3: Englishbazar police today rescued 11 boys who were being taken out of Bengal to work as labourers, while a couple working at a Dooars tea garden helped free a 15-year-girl from a trafficker.

All the boys, aged between 13 and 16 years, were from different villages in Malda’s Ratua, said Prasad Pradhan, the inspector-in-charge of the Englishbazar police station, who led the rescue operation.

“We had heard that the boys were being lured away in the name of job. We rescued them from the Station Road area. But the man with them fled,” Pradhan said. “The guardians have been informed and the boys would be handed over to them tomorrow.”

Malda district police chief Satyajit Banerjee expressed concern over the manner in which children were being trafficked in the name of jobs. “In most cases, the parents are promised with huge sums of money,” he said.

In another incident last week, Rajen Mahali and his wife Muni, working in the Carron tea garden in Jalpaiguri’s Nagrakata, helped rescue a girl from being trafficked.

“We were coming back to Carron in a jeep and one of our co-passengers, a girl, was weeping. When we asked her the reason, she said she hailed from Lakshmikantapur tea garden in Gayerkanta and had just returned from Delhi, where she worked as a domestic help. She said she met a man, Basant Mahali, on the train and they both got down at New Jalpaiguri station. He said he would escort her to Lakshmikantapur, but instead forced her on a vehicle bound for Carron,” said Rajen.

Basant and his wife had accompanied the girl from Delhi where she had gone to work as a domestic help. The girl worked there for a year.

“We know that Basant is a trafficker and took custody of the girl. We will return her to her parents on Saturday,” Muni said.

Basant has fled from the garden, the Mahalis added.