Navi Mumbai: The Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) team of Navi Mumbai crime branch have rescued a 16-year-old Bangladeshi girl and five women including two Bangladeshis from prostitution by raiding Navnath Inn lodge in Taloja MIDC area after sending a decoy customer on Dec 21.The police have arrested the lodge owner Vasant Shetty, manager Girish Shetty, and the room service boy Roshan Yadav for operating the prostitution racket at the lodge. As the accused had dragged a minor girl into flesh trade, Taloja police have invoked Pocso Act against the three accused for penetrative sexual assault and punishment for sexual assault on a child along with Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA). PITA deals with punishment for keeping a brothel or allowing premises to be used as a brothel, criminalizing living off the earnings of prostitution and procuring, inducing, or transporting a person (regardless of consent) for prostitution, or causing/inducing them to carry on prostitution in addition to BNS sections for trafficking of more than one person and of a child below 18 years of age.
Prithviraj Ghorpade, senior inspector of AHTU informed that acting on a tip off, they sent a decoy customer. The accused Yadav brought the minor girl and six women before him and offered sexual favour. After the decoy selected a woman, Yadav accepted Rs 2,000 from him and sent the woman to the room at the lodge with the decoy, who then signalled the police team waiting near the lodge and raided the lodge, thus rescuing the minor girl and six women aged 22 to 39 years from flesh trade. The three accused were arrested and handed over to Taloja police.
