The Commissionerate police on Sunday busted a sex racket operating from a rented house at Buddheswari Colony under the Laxmisagar police station in Bhubaneswar.
Acting on information from locals, the Laxmisagar police conducted a raid on the house, which was used as a guesthouse, and arrested three persons, including the guesthouse manager, and rescued a woman.
Sources said the racket was functioning from the guesthouse for the last two to three months. But since it didn’t have any signboard, nobody had any inkling about it. Later, though the police reportedly had conducted raids on it twice, they were unable to find anything illegal. However, after locals found girls and strangers frequenting the house, they became suspicious and informed police.
The cops were carrying out further investigation about the kingpin of the racket, the house owner, from where the sex workers were brought into the establishment and the modus operandi of contacting the customers by the accused. Notably, some sleazy hotels and guesthouses in the city’s Cuttack Road area and near the railway station are notorious for being used for prostitution rackets and are most of the time on the radar of police.
But it is not clear whether these hotel managements are providing space knowingly or unknowingly for these rackets. Besides, it is also not known whether police have, of late, held any meeting with hoteliers and guesthouse owners to ensure that their properties are not used for immoral activities.