Indian police arrest alleged kingpin of human trafficking

India police have arrested the alleged kingpin of a trafficking racket who sold hundreds of poor tribal girls for domestic slavery in the country's capital, an officer said Thursday. Police accused Baba Bamdev of posing as a spiritual guru and social worker to trick the often illiterate girls into travelling to New Delhi in the hope of a better life. Police were currently preparing charges against Bamdev who was in custody after his arrest in eastern Jharkhand on the weekend, said Aradhna Singh, officer in charge of the state's anti-human trafficking unit. ‘He used to run a fake non-profit group and pretended to be a saviour of poor and illiterate tribal girls,’ Singh said. ‘But in fact he is the kingpin of an organised inter-state human trafficking syndicate. He had been evading arrest for a long time but he's finally in our net now.’ Police fear some of the girls were sexually assaulted before they were sold to placement agencies in Delhi often as maids for middle-class households, Singh said, according to AFP.