A National Investigation Agency (NIA) court in Hyderabad sentenced nine individuals to life imprisonment on Friday in a 2019 human trafficking case involving Bangladeshi women. Eight of the convicts were Bangladeshi nationals and one was an Indian. In addition to the prison terms, the court imposed a fine of ₹1.37 lakh on each defendant, with a three‑month simple imprisonment penalty for those who failed to pay.
The case centers on the trafficking of Bangladeshi women into India, where they were lured with promises of well‑paid jobs only to be forced into prostitution. The original complaint was filed by Hyderabad Police after a September 2019 operation that rescued three Bangladeshi women from a brothel in Jalpally village and a fourth from a house in Mahimood Colony, Balapur. The NIA took over the investigation on 12 October 2019.
During the investigation, the accused were apprehended in various locations, including West Bengal and Telangana, between 2019 and 2020. The nine defendants—Ruhul Amin Dhali, Mohd Yousuf Khan (alias Md Imran), Bithi Begum (alias Khadija Shaik), Imamul Ghazi (alias Mohd Rana Hussain), Mohammed Al Mamun, Sojib Shaik, Suresh Kumar Das (alias Sagor), Mohd Abdulla Munshi (alias Abdul Sarkar), and Mohd Ayub Shaik—were prosecuted under provisions of the Indian Penal Code, the Foreigners Act, 1946, and the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956.
