The police after raiding several hideouts in Bhubaneswar arrested three persons, including a woman, on charges of bringing girls from Kendrapada on false promise of providing job and engaging them in flesh trade. The police also rescued a few girls.
The incident came to the fore after a minor girl from Tarada village under the Patkura police limits on Sunday escaped from the clutch of the arrested trio who had run the flesh trade by keeping a few girls at a guesthouse in Bhubaneswar. The girl first told her plight to her parents and later lodged a complaint with the Patkura police. The Patkura police registered a case on Tuesday and swung into action.
The arrested were identified as Sanjay Hati, his wife Jhilirani Mallick and his brother-in-law Guru Charan. Police also seized a four wheeler, four mobiles and some mobile SIM from the trio.
On Wednesday, the two rescued girls were medically examined at Patkura CHC whereas Hati was taken for further interrogation.
A minor girl, who is the sister-in-law of Hati and was used to take the two victim girls from Kendrapada to Cuttack and later to Bhubaneswar in a secret manner, is still at large.
According to Kendrapada SP Nitinjeet Singh, the two victim girls believing on Hati that he would arrange for them good jobs, on January 10 had fled their village in a car sent by the latter. Hati, a native of Baripada who has married to a girl in the two victim girls’ village, had promised the duo girls of job in a bedsheet company in Andhra Pradesh. They first came to Cuttack where they were received by Hati and later were taken to the Shree Sai guest house at Khandagiri area in Bhubaneswar. Hati first kept physical relationship with the duo several times and subsequently forced them to flesh trade.