GUWAHATI: Arunachal Pradesh police have busted an inter-state prostitution racket involving minor girls and arrested 15 persons, including eight customers, a senior police official said.
The arrested customers include two engineers and a doctor who are employed with the state government. Based on inputs, the police conducted raid at the alleged brothel-cum-residence in Itanagar and rescued three minor girls.
The two minors were being trafficked from Dhemaji in neighbouring Assam by two sisters who run a beauty parlour in Itanagar. The third minor, who is from Arunachal, was not forced into prostitution and has been reunited with her mother, police said.
“Medical tests indicate that three of the four children have a high viral load which may point to the presence of sexually-transmitted disease. Doctors can confirm it only after further tests are conducted,” Superintendent of Police (Itanagar Capital) Rohit Rajbir Singh said.
The arrested persons include four traffickers with two of them running a beauty parlour in Itanagar.
“They procure (bring) minor girls from poor families in Dhemaji on the pretext of getting them jobs at Itanagar. Once the girls are brought here, the two sisters with their network of pimps would look for suitable customers for sex with the minor victim girls,” the police said in a statement.
“Once they find a probable customer looking for minor girls, they would share the photos of the victims on WhatsApp and fix the rate. The girls would be then driven to the customer or the customer would come to a place of his choosing,” police said.
The police added that the traffickers would keep the money and take the victims for shopping at regular intervals. The police have identified two hotels where the girls were sexually assaulted and written to the authority for the cancellation of their licences.
‘Forced into prostitution’
After being trafficked to Itanagar, they were forced into prostitution by the sisters along with the other two women, said police. The two minors were being trafficked from Dhemaji in neighbouring Assam by two sisters who run a beauty parlour in Itanagar. The third, who is from Arunachal, was not forced into prostitution and has been reunited with her mother.