Bhubaneswar, Oct. 31: Airfield police today busted a sex racket and arrested three youths, including the kingpin, for operating flesh trade from a rented house at an apartment in the area.
The cops also rescued a 33-year-old woman and a 19-year-old girl.
The youths were identified as Preeti Ranjan Mohapatra, 28, Dibakar Behera, 31, and Chandrasekhar Das, 23. All of them hail from Berhampur.
Mohapatra, the mastermind, had been allegedly operating the racket from the rented house for the past 10 months. “Both Parida and Das reached Bhubaneswar yesterday,” said inspector in charge of Airfield police station Rashmi Ranjan Sahoo.
The police said both the girls were natives of Bengal. The woman, who had been in the trade for the past two years, had also pushed the teen into prostitution.
“A number of persons, including girls, used to visit the house, which raised doubts in our mind,” said a local resident.
Both the women used to fetch customers from Master Canteen. “They used to charge Rs 3,000 for a night, and Mohapatra, the house owner, used to take half of the money,” said a police official.
Sources said most of the sex rackets operating in the city ran from rented houses, and the criminals targeted those houses where the owners did not stay. “House owners should verify antecedent of the tenants before giving them house on rent,” he said.
“The middlemen involved in the racket generally demand between Rs 1,000 and Rs 2,000 for girls from Odisha, but the demand doubles when the girls are from other states,” said a police official.
Burglary
Burglars struck at four houses in Lingipur on the city outskirts in the Lingaraj police station limits and decamped with gold ornaments and cash worth more than Rs 20 lakh last night.
The police said the burglars had decamped with Rs 25,000 in cash and gold ornaments weighing 200 grams from the house of Subash Chandra Mohanty. From Ashok Kumar Sahu’s home, they looted Rs 3.5 lakh in cash and gold ornaments weighing 250 grams. Mohanty works as a manager with a Bihar-based steel company, while Sahu is a businessman. The burglars also targeted two of their neighbours. All four houses are located in a radius of 100 metres.