Acting on a tip-off regarding a prostitution racket operating inside a house in the Hriday Vihar Colony of Salempur—within the jurisdiction of the Ranipur Kotwali police station—a joint team comprising the police and the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU) arrested two men and one woman. The woman was running this illicit trade in collusion with her brother-in-law. A young female victim, a resident of Uttar Pradesh, was also rescued from the premises. The police have registered a First Information Report (FIR) against all the accused under relevant sections of the law.
According to the police, late on Friday evening, they received intelligence from an informer stating that a prostitution racket was being conducted inside a house in the Hriday Vihar Colony. Acting on this information, the AHTU and police teams reached the location and conducted a raid. During the raid, the police arrested the accused individuals: Irfan (a resident of Kalier village and police station area), Sofiyan (a resident of Mahmudpur village, Kalier police station area), and Chandni (a resident of Kalier).
An 18-year-old female victim, hailing from a district in Uttar Pradesh, was also rescued during the operation. Police interrogation revealed that the accused, Imran, was running this racket in collaboration with his sister-in-law, Chandni. They would lure customers by sending them photographs of the young woman via mobile phones. Kotwali In-charge Ashutosh Rana stated that an FIR has been registered against the accused under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act. The accused were subsequently produced before a court and sent to judicial custody.
**Lured via a Fake Instagram ID**
Police investigations revealed that the accused, Chandni, had ensnared the young woman—a resident of Uttar Pradesh—through a fake Instagram profile two months prior. Just last month, she had summoned the victim to the Bahadrabad area under the pretext of securing a job for her. The victim told the police that she was forcibly pushed into this illicit trade. The accused began blackmailing her by secretly recording videos and taking photographs of her in compromising situations. Whenever she expressed a desire to escape this quagmire, they would threaten to send these compromising videos and photos to her family members and relatives
