One of the family restaurants at Gai Ghat in Patna City where a raid was carried out on Tuesday. Picture by Sachin

Illegal sex trade has a new address. From the numerous and seedy beauty salons it is now increasingly being reported from private homes, flats and even family restaurants.

On Tuesday, a police team raided two family restaurants in the Gai Ghat area under Patna City’s Alamganj police station and nabbed 58 people, including 26 girls, allegedly involved in flesh trade.

This wasn’t an isolated case. During a raid on July 16, the police had nabbed 16 people, including 10 women, from a family restaurant in Hem Plaza of Kotwali area. A week later, on July 24, the police raided a private house in Saurangpur Gauriya area under Ramkrishna Nagar police station and nabbed two customers and three women, besides recovering liquor bottles and contraceptives.

“It is not as if sex traders never operated from flats and rented homes in Patna. But the family restaurant is a new phenomenon, with at least two cases being unearthed already. Raids leading to arrests from rented homes and flats have always been fewer in number. In Patna, the regular spots were always beauty salons. But recent raids indicate they might be moving out to newer places,” a police officer told The Telegraph on Wednesday.

July saw a total of three raids in residential apartments and rented homes. Before that, in March the Patna police had unearthed a sex racket operating for around five months from the ground floor of a single-storied house in Sanjay Gandhi Nagar locality in Patliputra police station area.

“Restaurants where the raids took place have a different kind of setting and are mostly very dark, having cabins. Raids at these places always unearthed the same elements — men and women in compromising positions, liquor bottles, dingy locked cabins, contraceptives, CDs and DVDs of pornographic films etc. The term ‘family restaurant’ is prominently displayed on each of the boards of these so-called eateries. It is a matter of investigation how family restaurants suddenly have suddenly turned into dens where illegal sex goes on. It could very well be that some of these parlours, fearing raids, have just changed their boards to say ‘family restaurants’ to camouflage the illegal trade inside from cops,” another police officer said.

The police were probing if this was the case. “Among men arrested from restaurants during the raids most were pimps involved in the racket since long. They are being interrogated. This year alone, the city police raided over 20 beauty parlours, now shut. Some parlours where the illegal practice is on still remain. The family restaurant phenomenon is definitely a shift and the police are trying to get into the exact modus operandi,” police sources said.