Mumbai:
A 23-year-old sex worker and her agent were arrested from a five-star hotel in Shivajinagar in a raid conducted by the Social Security Cell (SSC) of the city police on Saturday evening.
Both the accused are aspiring television actors in Mumbai and had met during an audition a few months ago. Yogita Madhukar Londhe, 23, and Gaurav Satyavirsingh Panvar, 28, are residents of Andheri, and Panvar, originally from Meerut in Uttar Pradesh, has been living in Mumbai for the last few years.
The police received a tip-off and made attempts to contact the duo for two days, after which a decoy customer was sent in and the arrests were made.
Inspector Bhanupratap Barge, SSC said, "Londhe is not well educated and hails from a lower middle class background and Panvar on the other hand has had a decent education and is financially well-to-do."
Barge added that the accused maintained an up-market lifestyle and this could be discerned by their dressing style, which was in tune with their career aspirations.
Following their arrest, the accused were immediately handed over to the Shivajinagar police and were produced in court.
"They have booked under sections 4, 5 and 8 of the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA) and were produced in court the on Sunday. While Londhe has been let off on bail, Panvar has been remanded to police custody till March 7," said Assistant Police Inspector Ramdas Karpe from Shivajinagar police station.
Budhwar Peth madam held after 21-yr-old Bangladeshi woman escapes from brothel
In desperate need of money to meet her medical expenses, a 21-year-old embroidery artisan from Dhaka, Bangladesh, was tricked into prostitution and ended up in a brothel in the city. On Thursday, she ran away from the brothel and was found by the Bundgarden police wandering aimlessly in the Pune railway station area.
As she could not narrate what had happened to her, she was transferred to the Rescue Foundation. There, she narrated her ordeal to fellow inmates. Two days after her escape, her brothel manager was arrested with the help of the Social Security Cell and the local police station.
The Faraskhana police said the arrest was possible because of the description provided by the victim.
In a raid conducted on Saturday, the Faraskhana police arrested 38-year-old Jaya Mayla Tamang, a resident of Khushboo Building, for making a living by forcing the victim into prostitution.
False promise
According to the complainant, Sub-Inspector U K Yadav of the Shukrawar Peth police chowky, the victim came to the city to earn money to support herself after undergoing an appendix surgery in Bangladesh. "In desperation she had approached an acquaintance. He introduced her to two others, who took advantage of her condition and made her cross the border. A person accompanied her till Pune in a train and all the while kept telling her she would get money after reaching Pune," said Yadav.
The person who accompanied the woman to the city handed her over to an unknown woman, who allegedly sold her to Tamang. The police said the Bangladeshi woman was kept trapped in a brothel in Budhwar Peth by Tamang.
The police booked four agents from Bangladesh, namely Noor Hussein, Raju, Majanoo Fakir and Shafique Fakir, an unidentified person and a person called Zohar Hussein, who allegedly accompanied the victim to the city.
The police said all suspects except Tamang were absconding.
Tamang was produced in the local court and remanded in police custody till March 6.