Cases of traffickers luring poor girls on the rise in Visakhapatnam

In almost 80 per cent of the cases, girls rescued hail from poor families

September 15, 2014 01:21 pm | Updated 01:21 pm IST - VISAKHAPATNAM:

Recently, two girls were rescued by sleuths of the City Task Force from an upscale apartment near Muralinagar, where they were allegedly being used for flesh trade.

The girls hailed from Bhadrachalam and Vizianagaram. Two things were common in them — both had lost their father at a young age and were from poor families.

This was a clear case of trafficking. Both the girls were lured into the trade either by offering money or forced into it, said CTF Inspector G.V. Ramana Rao. “Luring girls from poor families into flesh trade is on the rise, as 80 per cent of the cases that we have cracked fall in this category. And most of the girls are either from Telangana or from East and West Godavari districts of Andhra Pradesh,” he added.

In the last the six months, the CTF alone busted 30 sex rackets, and a senior police officer from the Law and Order wing said that such crimes would only increase with the city transforming into a metropolis.

Two variants

According to Mr. Ramana, there are two variants in this racket.

“The first being a brothel run by a person or a group or, at times, by a couple claiming to be husband and wife. The girls are mostly from economically backward families, who take up the profession out of compulsion to support their family. The organisers operate from rented premises and spread their network through cellphone and run the show,” said Mr. Ramana.

The second is categorised as hi-tech set-ups, wherein the entire business may be remotely controlled through Internet or cellphone, and they may have a pan India network.

Two such cases were recently busted at Seethammadhara and MVP Colony, and the girls involved were from Kolkata and Mumbai.

“In both the variants, they have a well oiled network and function in an organised way. In many cases, it has been seen that there is an exchange of girls between the organisers across cities. We are trying to asses whether girls are being trafficked through these networks,” said Mr. Ramana.

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