The Arunachal Pradesh police have busted an inter-State sex trafficking ring involving minors, rescued five girls aged 10-15 years and arrested 15 persons.
Seven of those arrested were traffickers and pimps and eight were customers, including two engineers and a doctor employed with the State government.
“Based on inputs, our team raided a brothel-cum-residence of an individual in [State capital] Itanagar and rescued three minor girls,” a police spokesperson said on Friday.
Two of the victims were trafficked from Dhemaji in Assam by two sisters. The third, from Arunachal Pradesh, was not forced into prostitution but was reunited with her mother, the police said.
Midway through the investigation, the police found out that the traffickers kept two more minor girls from Dhemaji in the custody of a trafficker. Both girls were rescued.
Two of the traffickers were running a beauty parlour in Itanagar, using it as a front for the flesh trade, police said.
“They lure minor girls from poor families in Assam on the pretext of getting them jobs in Itanagar. Once the girls are brought here, the two sisters with their network of pimps look for suitable customers for sex with these girls,” the spokesperson said.
“After finding a probable customer looking for minor girls, they share the photos of the victims on WhatsApp and fix the rate. They would then take the girls to a customer or the customer would come to a place of his choice,” he said.
The police also said the pimps would keep the money and would take the victims for shopping at regular intervals.
The police have identified two hotels where the girls were sexually assaulted and have written to the authority concerned for the cancellation of their licences.
