Aug 19 (Midday News): The Vashi police have arrested three members of a family for forcing girls into a prostitution racket. The cops were successful in rescuing four girls, including a minor who were locked inside a room at Juinagar.
According to the police, the main accused Shivan Kalavat (22) would bring girls to Navi Mumbai on the pretext of showing them the city and later sell them with the help of his mother Seeta, sister Archana and three others who are absconding now.
An officer from Vashi police station told mid-day, “Kalavat would lure the girls with his charm and get them to the city from other states. He claimed that he would show them Mumbai and would promise to return them to their states in a week’s time. However, after getting the girls to Juinagar, he would torture them by beating them mercilessly and would rape them himself.”
One such victim, who was locked in a room by Kalavat at Juinagar, managed to escape from the spot when the accused had gone for a bath. She went to Vashi police station, where she met an auto driver to whom she narrated her ordeal. He then took her to an NGO.
“The rickshaw driver dropped her to an NGO, following which they came to the police station and then we raided the house at Juinagar on Thursday and rescued three more girls from the room,” added the officer.
The parents of the girl who had managed to escape Kalavat’s house on Monday, had also registered a kidnapping case with a police station based in Madhya Pradesh.
The 17-year-old girl had been brought to the city four months ago, was being tortured and would soon have been sold to a pimp by the accused.
The three accused have been booked under Sections 376 (rape), 344 (wrongful confinement), 363 (kidnapping), 365 (kidnapping or abducting with intent to secretly and wrongfully confine a person), 366 (kidnapping, abduction or inducing woman to compel a woman) and 370 (buying or disposing of a person as a slave) of the Indian Penal Code, along with the relevant sections of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012.