BHUBANESWAR: A Special Task Force (STF) of Crime Branch on Tuesday claimed to have busted a sex racket and rescued six women from Old Town.
The women were rescued after the STF team nabbed Sheikh Ibrahim, the alleged kingpin of the sex racket. He is accused of trafficking Bangladeshi women to Odisha. Ibrahim was arrested along with his woman accomplice identified as Anjali Biwi from Pipili.
Sources said the women rescued from Old Town in the city told STF that they were asked to come to the city by a couple living in Pipili. STF DIG Jay Narayan Pankaj said they were verifying whether the rescued women are natives of West Bengal or Bangladesh. Investigation is on to find out whether Ibrahim and Anjali were running similar racket in other parts of the State.
Last month, the Commissionerate Police had arrested a Bangladeshi woman for illegally staying in the city. The matter came to light after the woman lodged a complaint with Laxmisagar police on December 17 alleging that the manager of a hotel and a housekeeping staff misbehaved and physically assaulted her.
Though police registered a case and arrested the hotel’s manager Mithun Swain and housekeeping staff Biswanath Patra, they also found that in her Aadhaar card, the woman was identified as Sikha Samaddar of West Bengal. Police then came to know that the details were fake and interrogated the woman, following which she revealed that she is a native of Bangladesh.