Former Jharkhand Agriculture Minister who was arrested in Delhi
Former Jharkhand Agriculture Minister Yogendra Sao, who was arrested in Delhi on Saturday, was reportedly hiding in the house of an alleged human trafficker who has at least one arrest warrant pending against him.
Sao, a Congress MLA from Barkagaon, was arrested on a non-bailable warrant issued against him by a Hazaribagh court.
The warrant was issued after the leader of a banned outfit told the police that the minister had given him money, guns and bikes to begin his group, ‘Jharkhand Tiger’. Later, the arrested leader of another group — Jharkhand Bachao Andolan — also told the police that Sao supported his organisation.
On Saturday, when Jharkhand’s CID and the Delhi Police came to arrest Sao in Shakurpur’s J J Colony, the alleged human trafficker,
Pannalal Mahto, was at home. The police teams reportedly interacted with him, but CID personnel did not arrest him.
The police said the team was not aware of Mahto’s antecedents. “The CID team was not aware that this man had one or two warrants out against him. They will go back to arrest him,” DGP Rajeev
Kumar said, without giving a timeline for the arrest. Baidnath Kumar of NGO Diya Seva Sansthan, however, contradicted the DGP’s claims, saying that the CID had contacted him beforehand for Mahto’s details. Kumar’s NGO meticulously documents human trafficking cases in the state and has earlier been consulted by the CID for data.
Aradhna Singh, the officer in-charge of Khunti district’s anti-human trafficking unit, has
confirmed that there are four cases pending against Mahto. “The warrant against him and his wife Sunita Devi was obtained only
ahead of (Durga) Puja and we were preparing to conduct a search operation,” the sub-inspector said.
“He runs his activities in the name of Pannalal Placement Agency, located opposite Subash Place police station in Delhi. He has always been a major
trafficker, but his name would not come up in FIRs because he is well-connected,” Singh said.
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