The Enforcement Wing of the Mumbai police is making extra efforts to bust sex and human trafficking rackets.
The Enforcement Wing of the Mumbai police is making extra efforts to bust sex and human trafficking rackets. Sources said the department has asked the social service branch (SSB) to look into this after it noted an increase in the prostitution dens in the city.
Officials in the SSB said that in the last six months, most of the prostitution rackets that have been busted were operating in residential areas. This had led to complaints from housing societies. Senior officers have now asked the SSB to tackle the problems and also nab the main accused who run prostitution dens.
“In most of the recent cases, the women rescued all hail from Bangladesh or Nepal. They were brought here after being offered high-paying jobs either as maids or in beauty parlours but were later sold off to pimps and pushed into prostitution rackets,” said an officer.
An officer with the SSB revealed that in the last month nearly 10 minors have been rescued from prostitution dens. “Most of these girls are between 13 and 16 and are from poor families. Recently, we rescued a teenage girl from Andheri area, who had been badly beaten up by one of the clients. This girl, a resident of Ambernath, was lured into it by easy money,” she explained. She added that the rescued minor was later found to be pregnant. “We then registered an FIR with all police stations in locations where she could remember having been sent. But in such cases it gets difficult to trace the actual perpetrator,” she said.
In case of rescued minors, the police also register an offence under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act in addition to sections of the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA).
To crack these sex rackets, the SSB unit is also taking the help of the anti-human trafficking units, which have a team at all city police stations. “Many of the rescued women once out on bail, assume different identities and even nationalities. Many of the Bangladeshi women get fake identification documents and get back into the rackets. We try to send back girls, especially minors, back home, but most of the time they are scared and don’t reveal their true contact details,” she said.
