A team of the National Investigation Agency (NIA) and Tripura Police jointly conducted raids in Unakoti district on Wednesday as part of operations against infiltration and human trafficking.
A police official said the raids targeted two people, identified as Paritosh Shil, 45, a resident of Bhagyapur in Kailashahar, and Ranu Pal, 42, hailing from the Nidebi area in Kumarghat—both accused of fabricating identity documents for infiltrators linked to international human trafficking networks. No one has been arrested till now.
Paritosh Shil, a salon owner, said the NIA team interrogated him for more than three hours, seized his mobile phone and bank documents, and asked him to appear at the agency’s office in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, on November 20 for further interrogation. During interrogation, the team showed Shil a person’s photograph to whom at least 13 calls were allegedly made from his mobile phone number. But Shil said the person was unknown to him and that his phone might have been used by someone else.
The NIA team reached Tripura on Monday afternoon from Guwahati, Assam.
The NIA arrested 25 people between 2022 and November last year for allegedly being involved in human trafficking. In June last year, the NIA chargesheeted eight people from Tripura in a case related to the smuggling of Bangladeshi nationals and Rohingya across the India-Bangladesh border. These arrests came during raids conducted by the central agency along the international border, which is 856 km long and partially unfenced. Human trafficking and smuggling of arms, drugs, cattle, and other livestock are among the major trans-border crimes.
