BY Navin Upadhyay
NEW DELHI/ September 22 — The most disturbing question emerging from an inter-state trafficking investigation that began in Imphal East and led police to a rented house in Delhi is also the one that remains unanswered: where are the young women whom police say were already taken to the national capital?
The case began on September 9, when a complaint was filed at the Imphal East Women Police Station concerning the suspected trafficking of six young women from the Keibi area. The following day, police raided a residence at Keibi Kumuda Leikai, where they said they rescued an 18-year-old woman and prevented two other women from being sent to Delhi. Two people, Chandam Tababi, also known as Taniya, and Khumanthem Nanao, were arrested during the operation. The rescued woman was subsequently placed at the One Stop Centre at Porompat.
What happened next took the investigation beyond Manipur. According to the police account presented before the court, investigators traced the recruitment to a local salon operator identified as Gaitri. Police allege that she approached young women with offers of jobs as hotel receptionists or beauticians and was working for a man identified as Bony. The prosecution told the court that the alleged network had already taken four or five women to Delhi before the Keibi raid.
That claim has left a crucial gap in the public record. The original complaint refers to six women, while the subsequent police account refers to one woman rescued, two whose departure was allegedly prevented and four or five who had already reached Delhi. It is not clear from the material made public whether these figures refer to the same six women at different stages or include additional women. The complete complaint has not been released, and the names, ages and present locations of all the women have not been publicly disclosed. The only woman whose post-rescue location has been identified is the 18-year-old placed at the One Stop Centre in Porompat.
The investigation acquired a Delhi address on September 16, when police arrested 27-year-old Ningombam Ronaldo from a rented house in Ghitorni. After obtaining transit remand from the Duty Magistrate at Patiala House Courts, Delhi, police brought him to Imphal the following day. The prosecution has accused him of handling part of the Delhi leg of the alleged operation, including transporting and harbouring women brought from Manipur.
During the bail proceedings, the prosecution told the magistrate that Ronaldo had received ₹20,000 for transporting each woman from Bony. Police also alleged that he received unspecified financial kickbacks for harbouring victims. The ₹20,000 figure, however, should not be presented as the amount for which a woman was supposedly “sold”. The amount placed before the court was described as a payment to an alleged transporter. No customer, buyer or third-party sale price has been identified in the public record.
read:
A person arrested from Delhi in connection with human trafficking has been sent to jail today.
He was produced in court today, and after the court rejected his bail plea, he was remanded to judicial custody.
More Details Awaited!#HumanTrafficking #ManipurPolice #manipurcrime pic.twitter.com/jq5ZHSpScT
— Poknapham / The People’s Chronicle (@PoknaphamNews) September 21, 2026
Police have alleged that the women were taken to Delhi hotels for sexual exploitation after being recruited through promises of employment. Yet the investigation has so far not publicly identified the hotels, customers or other premises allegedly involved. Ronaldo’s rented house in Ghitorni is the clearest physical link to Delhi that has emerged from the case.
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At the centre of the investigation is Bony, whom police have linked to the recruitment and the payments. Investigators have described him in some accounts as absconding, although reports have not been entirely consistent about the precise status of all the accused. His whereabouts could be critical to establishing what happened to the women after they left Manipur: who arranged their journey, where they were taken in Delhi, who received them and whether others were involved in exploiting them.
For now, the police have a chain of alleged participants stretching from Keibi to Ghitorni. Gaitri is accused of recruiting women locally; Tababi and Nanao were arrested during the initial operation; and Ronaldo is alleged to have handled their movement and accommodation in Delhi. But the prosecution’s account remains an investigation theory rather than a finding established at trial.
On September 231, Ronaldo was produced before the Judicial Magistrate First Class, Imphal East, after four days in police custody. The prosecution argued that he had allegedly admitted his involvement during interrogation, had received money for transporting women and that investigators still needed to trace the alleged organiser and other associates. The Magistrate rejected his bail application and sent him to judicial custody until October 5, holding that his custody was necessary for the investigation.
That leaves the most important part of the story unresolved. If four or five women had already been taken to Delhi, as the prosecution told the court, where are they now? Have they been located? Have they been recovered? Are they safe? Were they taken to the Ghitorni house, or moved elsewhere? And were the women mentioned in the original complaint the same women whom police say had already reached Delhi?
Those questions cannot be answered from the public record at present.
The case is therefore at an uncomfortable stage: serious allegations have produced arrests and one documented rescue, but the whereabouts of several women remain unclear. The police have identified an alleged recruitment route, a Delhi connection and a payment allegedly made for transporting women. What they have not yet provided publicly is a complete account of the women themselves.
That is why the next stage of the investigation matters. Finding Bony, tracing the money and travel trail, identifying the Delhi destinations and, above all, locating every woman allegedly moved out of Manipur will determine whether the fragments now before the court form a complete trafficking case.
For the moment, the trail runs from a house in Keibi to a rented room in Ghitorni. One young woman has been rescued. Several others are said to have been moved to Delhi. Where they are now remains the central unanswered question.
