A total of seven persons including two owners of Hotel Golden Dream have been sued in a case regarding the rescue incident of 40 people from the residential hotel in Chittagong city who were gathered there for sending them to Malaysia through sea route illegally.
Meanwhile, a staff of the residential hotel, Saiful Afsar, was arrested in this connection, said Kotwali police station’s Sub-Inspector Imam Hossain.
SI Imam lodged the case with the police station on Saturday morning mentioning seven persons including Hotel Golden Dream Owners Ali Akbar and Mohammad Mostafa under sections 6, 7 and 8 of Human Trafficking Prevention and Control Act 2012.
Earlier, Kotwali police on Friday night nabbed 40 people from the residential hotel in city’s Reazuddin Bazar as they were gathered there for going to Malaysia.
Chittagong Metropolitan Police’s Assistant Commissioner (Kotwali circle) Shah Mohammad Abdur Rouf said they nabbed the people after a two-hour raid at the hotel from 8pm to 10pm following on a tip-off.
On early Thursday, a trawler was capsized at about eight kilometres southwest of Kutubdia Island in the Bay of Bengal due to overloading while 43 people including six suspected traffickers were rescued and recovered seven dead bodies so far.
According to the victims, they started journey with another boat from Chittagong city’s Majhirghat on Wednesday at around 11pm after being gathered by the traffickers.
A total of 3,793 people were rescued from Cox’s Bazar, Chittagong city and district in last five years while about 15,000-20,000 people were trafficked to Thailand and Malaysia in last one decade.
Police Headquarters’ Anti-Human Trafficking Special Committee, after an investigation, found one Myanmar national Tajar Muluk, who came at Teknaf of Cox’s Bazar district about a decade ago, first started human trafficking from Bangladesh to Malaysia and Thailand in 2000.
The committee’s recent report in 2014 said 11 international human traffickers and 230 Bangladeshi others are engaged in the trafficking who are under the command of one Thailand expatriate Malaysian woman Manaking.
