More cases of online soliciting are surfacing in the State, with the Kochi police busting yet another prostitution racket which trafficked a girl from Kolkata and operated through a website to get clients.
Late on Saturday, acting on a tip-off, a police decoy approached the racket posing as a potential client, apprehended the middle-man and the owners of a lodge near the KSRTC bus stand, who facilitated the prostitution and rescued the victim. Johny Joseph, 42, a native of Vyttila, was the racket’s alleged kingpin while the lodge owners were identified as Reji Mathew, 32, of Kottarakkara and Maneesh Lal, 27 of Mynagappally.
The sleuths first received a tip-off about the racket’s operation from members of the anti-human trafficking club in Kochi.
During a raid at the lodge, the sleuths recovered various pieces of evidence on the racket’s operation and recovered Rs. 50,000 from the possession of the accused. During the interrogation, they confessed to charging exorbitant amounts from the clients and hinted at the involvement more persons in the racket.
Preliminary investigations revealed that the racket had bought the girl, whose whereabouts are yet to be verified, from a Bengaluru-based human trafficking racket. The police are now trying to ascertain the age of the rescued girl, who the investigators felt, was a minor.
Official sources said that the girl had been identified as a school drop-out and was brought to Kochi by offering her a job. “The accused had ‘leased’ the girl for a period of five days by paying Rs. 25,000 to a middle-man and brought her to Kochi with the intention of operating the prostitution racket. They put out an advertisement in a free classifieds website, offering young women for dating, said S. Sreejith, Inspector General of Police, Kochi Range, explaining their modus operandi.
More women being trapped
The police have also received information about the accused trapping more women in a similar manner and operating prostitution rackets using the same modus operandi.
Meanwhile, based on the information collected from the accused and the victim, a police team has been sent to Bengaluru to trace the middle-man.
