Bharuch: Flesh trade racket busted, 12 women from Bangladesh, 2 from West Bengal rescued; 4 arrested   

Shaikh, however, allegedly pushed the women into flesh trade, confining them in his house in Jambusar, from where the brothel ran.

Police said that the women were forced to work as sex workers in spas in Bharuch and Ankleshwar.

“Of these, three women worked in Muskan spa run by one Nazim Khan in Bharuch while three worked in a guest house run by a man named Raees Shaikh in Bharuch and four women were sent to a spa in Ankleshwar run by Sujitkumar,” police said.

The joint police team raided the three locations and rescued 10 women while four were found in Shaikh’s house. “On interrogating Shaikh, he revealed that he had himself arrived in India as an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh and had managed to acquire fake identity proofs and birth certificates in West Bengal. He had been living in different cities of Gujarat for a decade. He used his network of Bangladeshi agents as well as his relatives to lure Bangladeshi women to India. He would offer them employment at beauty parlours and as domestic maids…” the police said.

The police said that Shaikh had allegedly also confessed that he had managed to facilitate 60 Bangladeshi women for illegally living in India.
“He also confessed that apart from the 12 women rescued from his residence, he had also facilitated other Bangladeshi women to settle in other states such as Goa, Maharashtra and Rajasthan through a network of agents,” police said.

Police said that apart from mobile phones and cash of Rs 64,000, identity cards of the Bangladeshi nationals were also recovered during the raid.
The four men– Shaikh, Nazim Khan, Raees Shaukh and Sujitkumar Jha, have been booked under various sections of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, as well as the Bharatiya Nyay Sanhita, 2023.