DNA

Mumbai, Dec 10:  Fourteen people, including two doctors and a police constable, were arrested on charges of involvement in a flesh trade racket in a pre-dawn raid on a hotel in Sion on Sunday.

Following complaints from local residents that Hotel Shangrila was being used for dubious activities, a team led by Deputy Commissioner of Police (Zone IV) Sunil Ramanand raided the place at 3am and rounded up the owners, Dr Suresh Mirchandani, 65, and Dr Avinash Bhavnani, 47, and the manager, Prakash Chand Gound, 50.

They also arrested constable Maruti Deshmukh, 37, from the local arms division, who was at the hotel at the time. All four were produced before a magistrate at the Bhoiwada court, who released them on bail of Rs3,000 each.

While the hotel, which provides lodging and boarding, is run from the ground floor of the building, the doctors live on the first floor. They run a private clinic at Sion Koliwada and occasionally have patients who come home for consultation, police said.

The police have set up a committee to evaluate if the violations committed at the hotel are sufficient grounds to revoke its licence. By law, every place of public lodging must have a licence issued by the police. “We have also written to the BMC and the fire department to find out if they had been violating other rules,” said a senior officer from the Sion police station.