BHUBANESWAR: The Commissionerate Police on Monday busted a sex racket allegedly being run under the garb of a consultancy firm at Satya Vihar locality of the State capital. The accused Laxminarayan Patnaik allegedly operated the racket from a three-storey building he had taken on rent in October last year for Rs 40,000 per month.
While the consultancy firm offered services such as filing of Goods and Services Tax (GST), applying for Aadhaar cards and others, Patnaik could not produce a single document to the police to establish his business was legal. The police also could not find any document of a customer who had availed services from the firm. The racket was exposed after a girl who was assured a job in the firm but allegedly forced to engage in flesh trade, escaped from a room in the building where she was confined and narrated her ordeal to Mancheswar police on Sunday evening.
The police raided the building late at night and nabbed Patnaik from the spot. A man, possibly a customer and a woman managed to give the cops a slip. Police said Patnaik was running the racket for the last several months and used to charge Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 per customer. “The owner of the house has also been questioned. If it is established that she or her husband were aware about the racket then they will also be booked by Mancheswar police and steps initiated to seal the building,” said ACP Sanjeev Satpathy.