Hyderabad: Six months after two tribal women went missing from Macherial town, police have tracked them down to Madhya Pradesh where they were allegedly sold to two businessmen for 2.5 lakh each. Cops also arrested three people for human trafficking who allegedly forcibly took the women to MP, posed as their family members and married them off to the businessmen, in exchange for money.The three brokers have been booked under Section 318 (4) (cheating) and 143 (trafficking) of the BNS. The key accused in the case is still absconding.Police said that the two victims who belong to a village in Bejjur mandal of Kumuram Bheem Asifabad district have been brought back. The duo had been living in Macherial town since May 2025 and working at a shopping mall there. The incident first came to light in Sept 2025, when 65-year-old tribal woman from the village approached police to file a missing person’s complaint against her daughter (24) and her friend (26) — from same mandal.‘Untraceable earlier’They were untraceable since July, 2025. “My daughter and her friend last visited us for a local festival in June 2026. Subsequently, my daughter contacted her cousin saying that they took up some temporary jobs at Bhupalapally district and Chandrapur in Maharashtra in July. Since July 18, my daughter’s phone was switched off. We tried unsuccessfully to locate them in Mancherial,” the complainant stated.During initial probe, Bejjur police said that they did not find any clues. “Recently, we got information about the whereabouts of the two women and on March 14, we traced them to a town in Madhya Pradesh. Both of them are married to two local businessmen. One of them is pregnant,” said an investigator.Police brought the two women and their husbands to Bejjur to record their statements. The husbands told police that in July 2025, one Prashant alias Babloo and his wife, Savita, from Mancherial approached them through Mahesh and Rahul (from Sironcha in Maharashtra and MP respectively) with a marriage proposal with the two women. “Prashant lied to the businessmen saying that he was the maternal uncle of the prospective brides. The businessmen paid 2.5 lakh each to the middlemen as brokerage,” said Santosh Kumar, CI, Koutala. The women told police that Prashant and Savita were their neighbours in Mancherial and they had initially rejected the couple’s ‘money for marriage’ proposal. “Yet, the couple along with Mahesh, forcibly took the women to MP in train and performed their marriages in a temple,” the CI added.Based on their confessions, police arrested Prashant, Savita and Mahesh on Thursday and produced them before the local court. They were remanded to judicial custody on Friday. Police said that efforts are on to nab key accused, Rahul.
