They are quizzing three crewmen taken on remand, who were arrested from the boat.

A patrol team of Bangladesh Navy Sunday rescued the 90 youths while they were being taken to Saint Martin's Island in a motor boat to board them into a Greece-bound ship.

Ali Overseas Travel Agencies is neither registered with the government nor is it a member of Association of Travel Agents of Bangladesh (Atab).

"It is very difficult to track down such people as they do not have registration or any particular address," said a high official of the civil aviation ministry, wishing anonymity.

Officials at the Ministry of Expatriates Welfare and Overseas Employment also has no information about the so-called travel agency.

"We look after the matters related to recruiting agencies, not human trafficking issues, it is the job of the home ministry," said a ministry high official.

Police took the rescued 90 youths into safe custody, after producing them to court, our Chittagong office says.

Meanwhile, the three crew members during primary interrogation have told police that Md Mohiuddin, proprietor of a firm named Master Art at Shikalbaha under Patiya upazila, hired the boat for Tk 5,000 to carry the youths to the off-shore island of Kutubdia in Cox's Bazar district.

Police on Sunday night raided Mohiuddin's village home in Patiya upazila but did not find him.

Chittagong Metropolitan Police (CMP) Commissioner Amjad Hossain yesterday told The Daily Star, "We are separately interrogating the 90 youths and collecting individual statements to trace out the gangs involved in this human trafficking."

According to preliminary findings, the youths were recruited from Sitakunda in Chittagong, Faridpur, Sirajganj and some other northern districts, the CMP commissioner said. He hinted at the involvement of some gangs of those areas with the incident.

Sources, meanwhile, said Md Ali of Sitakunda, who runs Ali Overseas Travel Agency at Motijheel, Mukti of Halishahar in Chittagong, Abdus Salam and Abul Kalam of Sitakunda were the lynchpins of the trafficking.

They recruited the youths promising them lucrative jobs in Greece and some other European countries.

Aziz and Shamim who stay in Greece oversaw the whole deal, the sources said, adding that the youths committed to pay Tk 2 to Tk 5 lakh each to the racketeers.

In the third week of February this year, 11 Bangladeshis perished in a boat drifting around on the Mediterranean en route to Spain from Morocco.