The National Investigation Agency (NIA) has chargesheeted two men for involvement in the illegal human trafficking from India to the US via the ‘dunki' route, officials said on Thursday.
Sunny, a resident of Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh) and Shubham Sandhal alias Deep Hundi of Peeragardhi, New Delhi, have been named in the chargesheet filed on Wednesday in a NIA special court in Mohali, they said.
The duo have been charged with illegal human trafficking and cheating in the case, the officials said.
Both of them were arrested in July this year, around three months after the arrest of the main accused, Gagandeep Singh alias Goldy, from Tilak Nagar area of New Delhi.
The case was initially registered by Punjab Police on February 18 this year.
NIA, which took over the case from the Punjab Police in March this year, found during investigation that Sunny was a ‘donkar' actively involved in human trafficking via the ‘dunki' route, a statement issued by the probe agency said.
While he was based in Mexico from 2021 to 2023, he connived with Goldy and others to facilitate illegal border crossings and unlawfully detaining the victims and he received payments through hawala and bank transfers, the NIA said.
Even after returning to India in 2023, he continued coordinating logistics, managing hawala transactions, and directly sending victims via the dunki route, the probe agency said.
Shubham Sandhal, a Delhi-based hawala agent, was mainly engaged in facilitating illegal fund transfers for the human trafficking syndicate, led by Goldy and his associates, it said.
NIA investigations revealed that Shubham collected money from Indian clients and remitted it abroad using the hawala network.
His role was to smoothly manage and move the illicit funds across India, Mexico and the US as part of the illegal immigration racket, the statement said.
NIA is continuing with its investigation against other accused in the case and is also working to dismantle similar illegal trafficking syndicates involved in cheating and exploiting innocent people with false promises of legal visa, it added.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
