A prostitution racket was busted in Mumbai’s Mulund area and the police rescued eight women and one minor girl, news agency PTI reported citing an official familiar with the matter on Thursday. The development came after a raid was conducted on a hotel on Wednesday.
As per the report, the 34-year-old woman was running the racket and had been arrested in similar cases previously.
"The accused has been arrested in similar cases earlier. A raid was conducted on a hotel in Mulund on Wednesday, leading to eight women and a minor girl getting rescued," a senior police official told PTI.
In February, a 40-year-old woman was arrested for running a prostitution racket from a spa in a popular mall in the Vashi area of Mavi Mumbai, according to PTI.
Acting on a tip-off, the police sent a decoy customer to the spa and found two women around 20, who were working at the outlet and being forced into flesh trade. The woman responsible for forcing them into prostitution was arrested and taken into custody.
A case was registered against the accused woman under sections 370 (trafficking of persons) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and provisions of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, as per the PTI report.
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In another shocking incident, a woman was sentenced to 9 years in prison by a special court in Mumbai in February, for pushing her minor daughter into prostitution, according to The Indian Express. The submissions made before the court stated that the minor’s father passed away when she was 7-year-old following which her mother remarried.
The victim in her deposition said that by the time she reached Class 6, her mother would lock her in with strange men in a room who sexually assaulted her. Whenever she refused her mother would assault her.
As per the report, the court found the woman guilty of trafficking under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and violating the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act for living off her daughter's earnings derived from prostitution. The convicted woman, who was arrested in 2014, had already served 10 years in jail. So her sentence was adjusted to account for the time she has already spent incarcerated.