Police on Tuesday arrested a grocer in connection with the child trafficking case in which eight persons, including the principal of a central school, had already been held in Bankura.

Grocer Bikash Gupta has been arrested from the Coke Oven police station area of Durgapur as he allegedly facilitated the “purchase” of five children from a woman.

“We have arrested another person who is linked to the child trafficking racket. The principal of the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya had a plan to send the four children to Rajasthan, which is his home state. We are interrogating the principal and the husband of the woman teacher to know the actual purpose of buying the kids,” said Dhritiman Sarkar, the Bankura police chief.

The investigators said they were trying to find out whether the woman’s claim that she was the mother of all the five children was true.

“It is clear to us that there was a deal to sell the children and Rs 2.25 lakh had been paid to the woman. But it is not clear whether the woman is the mother of all children or she had brought them from other places. We need to go for a DNA test to confirm it,” said a senior police officer in Bankura.

On Friday, CPM’s youth wing DYFI and its women wing, AIDWA, jointly demonstrated in front of Bankura police station demanding punishment of those involved in the trafficking racket.

Chairperson of the state commission for the protection of child rights Ananya Chakraborty met the children at the Bankura home. She also held a meeting with district magistrate Radhika K. Aiyar and police chief Sarkar at Bankura circuit house in this connection.