23 October 2026
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Busting Gangs of Child Lifters

SSP of Aligarh in Uttar Pradesh, Mr. Kalanidhi Naithani has started a good work of uniting the lost and kidnapped with their parents under his mission ‘Smile’. In a recent crackdown on the culprits, the police teams have not only recovered quite a few of the missing children, but also apprehended some key accused.
Indian Masterminds Stories

Nothing can be more painful than being separated from your child, for whatever reason. Nobody wants to go through this feeling anytime in their life. Now in past few years, many kids gor separated from their parents due to the increase in human trafficking incidents. They are many gangs involved in the human trafficking and stealing of children takes all over the world. 

To bust those gangs and unite the kids with their parents SSP of Aligarh Police Mr. Kalanidhi Naithani has started a noble initiative named ‘Smile’. 

Mr. Naithani is currently the SSP of Aligarh

The 2010-batch officer who has also served as SSP Lucknow & Ghaziabad believes that no work is bigger than uniting the lost kid with their mothers. With this thought he has started operation Smile and constituted a team of Aligarh police personnel under the leadership of City SP Mr. Kuldeep Gunawat. 

Going After Human Traffickers 

Operation Smile has recently been started by the SSP, Mr. Naithani. The first step in the mission was to develop a team who is efficient enough to locate a child, rescue them and arresting the accused. So, he started it by gathering the team from different police station in the district. He also recasted the Anti-Human Trafficking team and gave them the stature of a station area in the district. 

The team worked day & night and has rescued 6 children stolen from different district under Operation ‘Smile’. 

Five children rescued in a one-night operation 

Under Operation Smile, the police team recently rescued five children in a one-night operation. The children were stolen from different districts in the last seven months. Two of these were from Ghaziabad, falling under the National Capital Region (NCR). It was a combined victorty by the anti-trafficking unit, police team of Mahuakhera (Aligarh), andsurveillance team under City SP Mr. Gunwat, who led this operation and arrested the gang of 16 people involved in stealing, brokering and trading of child. 

Mr. Naithani with his team during his days as the SSP, Lucknow

The police started the operation after getting a lead that three leaders of the gang were coming to steal a child on a motorbike. 

The police arrested them and on the basis of their interrogation all other members of their gangs were also apprehended. 

Nine women were also involved in this gang who were actively participating in the trading of the kid. 

In a video message sent to Indian Masterminds, IPS officer Mr. Naithani said, “The gang used to steal the children playing outside their houses. They used to first mark the children, click their pictures and sent it to the potential buyers. The female members used to brokerage in selling those children to the families who wanted to adopt the kids. They would usually charge between 50,000 to several lakhs for one child. Our team has seized fake adoption papers from the houses of people who used to buy the kids. We have arrested all the top to bottom members of this gang.” 

In a similar operation led by the Aligarh police with the help of Ghaziabad police, a child and five accused were also arrested. 


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