KUALA LUMPUR, May 25 — The police have charged 86 individuals since last year under the Anti-Trafficking in Persons and Anti-Smuggling of Migrants Act 2007 (ATIPSOM), Inspector-General of Police Tan Sri Khalid Abu Bakar said today.

Out of the 86, 66 were charged last year while a further 20 were charged between January and April this year.

“For 2013, PDRM succeeded in charging 66 people under ATIPSOM, while between January and April 2015, 20 people were charged under the same Act,” Khalid said on his official Facebook page, using the Malay acronym for the police.

After the Home Ministry denied the existence of human trafficking camps in Malaysia, police found about 30 graves believed to contain hundreds of Rohingya and Bangladeshi corpses earlier this month, according to Utusan Malaysia yesterday.

The paper’s Sunday edition, Mingguan Malaysia, reported that the graves were found in forests in Padang Besar and Wang Kelian, and are believed to be linked to the mass graves found previously in Songkhla, Thailand, from which Thai authorities had exhumed 26 bodies likely to be of migrants from Myanmar and Bangladesh.

The newspaper also reported that several foreigners and local villagers were arrested under ATIPSOM on suspicion of bringing in the migrants.

After the report, Home Minister Datuk Seri Ahmad Zahid Hamidi was quoted in Bernama as confirming the find and that police were still identifying the bodies.

Following that, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak vowed today to find those responsible for the mass graves in Perlis where hundreds of dead Bangladeshi and Rohingya immigrants were found buried by the police earlier this month.

Last year, Malaysia was relegated from Tier 2 to Tier 3 in the US State Department’s annual Trafficking in Persons report, the lowest ranking, joining Thailand, The Gambia and Venezuela.

Malaysia’s dire record on people smuggling may be used by a US lawmaker to derail talks in the controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, the Huffington Post reported.