Five held for running sex racket, forcing girls into flesh trade

Noida: A sex racket operating out of a guesthouse in Sector-15 area of Noida was busted by police with the arrest of five persons, including the owner of guest house.

During the raid, on Saturday, police also rescued three girls from the clutches of prostitution.

According to police, four of the accused, including a woman, were arrested during the raid, after they were found suspected of running a sex racket.

The owner of the guest house Sumit Kumar was arrested on Tuesday morning.

All the five accused have been sent to judicial custody after being produced before the court, said police officials.

On September 1, the raid was undertaken after acting upon a complaint by a resident of Noida Sector-8, who said that his 14-year-old daughter had been abducted by some persons in his neighborhood and being forced into prostitution.

"We received a complaint stating that a minor girl has been kidnapped by one Santosh and being sold to some people to force her into prostitution. Based on investigations, on September 1, we arrested the accused Santosh and three other persons identified as Saurabh, Mohammad Hakeem and Preeti, who allegedly tried to push the girl into prostitution," said Arun Kumar Singh, Superintendent of Police, Noida.

"A sum of Rs 90,000 and five mobile phones were also recovered from the possession of the accused," he added

The officer further said that upon interrogation, the accused told police that they used to lure girls from poor families on the pretext of providing them high profile jobs, but would push them into prostitution.

"The gang used to provide pictures of the victim girls to potential customers through WhatsApp, posing them as high profile college-going girls. After the deal got fixed, they would call the customer to the guest house in Naya Bans area of Sector-15, where they provide them the girl of their choice. All the girls, aged between 15 to 40 years, mostly hail from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal," a senior police officer said.

He added that Hakeem operates couple of other such rackets at some guest houses in Delhi's Ashok Nagar area.