The child traffickers. Picture by Pankaj Singh

Bokaro, June 13: With the arrest of a brother-sister duo for kidnapping six children from Gumla Colony in the steel city, the police claim to have unearthed an inter-state child-trafficking racket here.

Sheela Devi, 31, and Ram Prasad Baraik, 24, were arrested by the Bokaro police yesterday, allegedly for trying to kidnap the children — all between the age of 7 and 10 — from Gumla Colony on June 9. Basant Kumar, Ajay, Rahul, Jaidev, Mukesh Oraon and Navnit were rescued from Gumla district today.

The police are now looking out for two placement agents — Ajay Sahu of Ranchi and Manik alias Sanjay Yadav — who, they said, have been running the child racket for years from their employment offices at Ratu Road in Ranchi, Co-operative Colony in Bokaro and Pahargunj in New Delhi.

According to Bokaro superintendent of police Priya Dubey, the disappearance of the six children came to the fore after one Jagarnath Sah lodged an FIR yesterday saying his son Basant, a student of Class V, was missing since Monday (June 9).

When the police inquired, five other parents said their children, too, were mis- sing from the same day and that they had last seen Baraik, a truck driver, talking to the boys.

The police picked up Baraik within two hours of the FIR and his sister Sheela half-an-hour later.

Sheela, who worked at an engineer’s house in Quarter no. IV F – 2050 and also doubled up as an agent of Sanjay Yadav, initially tried to mislead the police saying she had sent the children, each for Rs 6,000, to Mughalsarai in Uttar Pradesh. She was released but the police shadowed her to the placement agency of Yadav, where she was arrested again.

When put pressure, she informed the police that the children were lured to Dhanbad in a black Maruti (JH-09C-2020) on Monday.

There they were kept at a garage for two days and then moved to Ranchi yesterday morning.

However, the police said, the children were abandoned at a bus stop in the state capital. From there the six boys took a bus to Gumla because Basant knew a relative there. He called up his parents and the police today brought them back to the steel city.