Jamshedpur, July 15: Police suspect the involvement of an inter-state gang following the recovery of 15 SIM cards from an alleged member of a sex racket, which was busted in the Sitaramdera police station area yesterday.
City superintendent of police Rajiv Ranjan Singh said the SIM cards recovered from the gang member suggested that the criminals operated from several cities, including Bangalore, Calcutta, Cuttack, Bhubaneswar, and Delhi, and had also spread their wings in the steel city.
Last evening, a team led by the officer-in-charge of Sitaramdera police station arrested three women and one man from the Niti Bag area for their alleged involvement in a sex racket.
Two of the women are in their mid-30s while the third is in her 20s. The arrested persons reportedly managed to get rented houses at Niti Bag and Kadma. ?SIM cards of different private telecom operators have been recovered from one of the women, who hailed from Cuttack. She stayed in the Niti Bag area under Sitaramdera police station,? Singh told The Telegraph.
The SIM cards have been de-activated and the messages stored ?safely?, police said. ?All the saved messages are related to sex and pornography,? the city SP said.
The woman from Cuttack is understood to have told the police that she has visited several cities, including Bangalore and Calcutta, in the past two years.
Shedding light on the modus operandi of the gang, officer in-charge of Sitaramdera police station B.L. Mishra said its members used mobile phones for their operations.
?The woman (known as auntie) who runs the racket has shifted her family members to a rented house in Bhatia bustee under Kadma police station. The man (known as uncle) hails from Telco Colony. The two used to introduce themselves as husband and wife to customers,? he added. The police also claimed that several college girls were involved in the racket.
Besides the SIM cards, the police have also recovered about Rs 6,000 in cash, a telephone index, two mobile phones and condoms from the arrested persons.
Missing girls
Police have picked up a youth from Mango for his alleged involvement in flesh trade.
Bijay Mandal was picked up after two teenaged girls disappeared from home on Wednesday night. The police said one of the girls wrote a letter in which she claimed to have left for an ?undisclosed? city to join a dance group.
The police have launched an operation in and around the steel city and Ranchi to trace the missing cousins.Officer-in-charge of Mango police station S.P. Trivedi said: ?The girls are suspected to be in Mumbai. One of them contacted Mandal, an acquaintance, this morning to enquire about her family.
