'Naive' nursing students ‘rescued from traffickers’ at KIA

Bengaluru/Mangaluru: A suspected human trafficking attempt was thwarted by alert immigration officials at the Kempegowda International Airport here on Monday night with the rescue of thirty-two women nursing graduates from Kerala, suspected to be victims of the racket.

Officials detained Tony Tom, a Kerala native who was taking the students to Armenia for pursuing a short-term course to learn German at the University of Traditional Medicine of Armenia (UTMA). Later he along with the students were handed over to BIAL police for investigation.

Reportedly Tony, who runs an education consultancy in Kankanady area of Mangaluru had recently put up an advertisement, which promised placements to nursing students in reputed hospitals abroad if they knew to converse in German. The women, most of who have studied in Mangaluru had enrolled at the institute to pursue the two-month German course at UTMA after seeing the advertisement. Each of the students had made payment of Rs 30,000 towards airfare and USD 1,200 for the course fee to Tom.

Their flight was scheduled for 4 am on Tuesday but the immigration officials suspected something fishy as UTMA is a medical science university and students were being taken for a German-language course.

Tony was arrested on the charge of attempted human trafficking, said a police official adding that they are unsure of what he would have done with the girls in Armenia if no such course existed at UTMA.

Meanwhile, the police are verifying Tony Tom’s antecedents and have also recorded the statements of all 32 women.