HYDERABAD: A police constable, who was on a decoy operation to bust a hitech flesh trade racket, was injured when the racketeers tried to run over their car over the police party and flee fearing arrest.
Police, however, could arrest four persons including a woman for running the female escort racket attracting youngsters through WhatsApp and websites. The arrests were made by the Hyderabad Cyber Crime police on Friday. The key accused in the case is still absconding.
The inter-state gang is being run from a rented premises at Manikonda. The marketing intelligence team of Cyber Crime police recently noticed an advertisement inviting prospective customers seeking female escort services in Hyderabad through the website www.blissfullescorts.com.“We conducted a decoy operation by contacting the number furnished in the advertisement. The receiver of call contacted through a WhatsApp number and provided a photograph of a girl quoting `25,000 and fixed the meeting on the Madhapur to Hitech city road. When the decoy team reached there, two persons approached them in a Honda City car and asked for identity proof for booking a room,” KCS Raghu Vir, assistant commissioner of police, Cyber Crime, said.
Once the decoy team came to know that they are running flesh trade, they tried to nab the duo. The duo, in a bid to flee, drove their vehicle over one of the police constable, Maheshwar Reddy, who sustained an injury on his right hand. However, the police managed to nab them and seized their mobile phones containing obscene photos of the girls and chatting details in WhatsApp from them.
The accused confessed that they were running flesh trade through online advertisement. The accused are part of a wider racket maintaining contacts between similar prostitute networks and bringing girls from different cities like Kolkata, Mumbai, Delhi and others. These girls are kept in posh localities and hotels in Madhapur area and the customers are brought to these places.
The entire communication is maintained online. The arrested persons are Ayesha Begum of Hyderabad, Upender Kumar Yadav of Bihar, Anish Kumar Yadav of Bihar and Imran Mustafa Shaikh of Thane, Maharashtra. Another accused Saleem and their web designer/operator Totu are still absconding.