Four persons of Indian origin have been arrested in Princeton in United States’ Texas on charges of human trafficking and allegedly running a “forced labour” scheme, reported Fox 4 News on Monday.
The arrests were made in March after 15 women were found living in a home in Collin County and sleeping on the floor. The details of the investigation were only recently made public.
According to the police affidavit, the investigation began after a pest control company was called to the home to check for bed bugs.
The company’s employees found that “each room…had three to five young females sleeping on the floors”. There were also “large amounts of suitcases”. The company then contacted the police.
The police have not revealed where the women are from or how they are involved in the scheme.
Those arrested have been identified as Dwaraka Gunda (31), her husband Santhosh Katkoori (31), Anil Male (37) and Chandan Dasireddy (24).
According to NBC DFW, the 15 women were forced to work for several shell companies owned by Katkoori and Gunda as programmers.
During the search of the house, several laptops, phones, printers and allegedly fraudulent documents were also seized.
The police said they later learnt that several locations within the Princeton, Melissa and McKinney regions were part of the human trafficking scheme. More gadgets and documents were seized subsequently.
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