Couple owning brothels, six accomplices arrested

A couple along with six of their accomplices were arrested by Delhi Police for their involvement in human trafficking.

The arrested have been booked under the Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), said police.

The arrested include Saira Begum and her husband Aafaq Hussain, who had been running several brothels in Delhi’s Garstin Bastion (GB) Road.

“The couple control and carry forward the illegal business of human trafficking and prostitution, and have been receiving earnings from the business of commercial sexual exploitation since year 1999 to till date,” said a police officer.

According to police the couple ran a syndicate which is suspected to have trafficked more than 5,000 girls from Nepal and remote areas of West Bengal, Odisha, Karnataka, Assam, Andhra and other states.

It all started in 2013 when on the statement of two rescued girls from a brothel in GB Road, two separate cases were registered by the Crime Branch.

On June 16, 2015, during the investigation of the two cases, Saira Begum and Afaq Hussain, who were the owner of the kotha from where the two girls were rescued were arrested.

On interrogation of the two it became clear that they are running an organized racket of human trafficking for the purpose of commercial sexual exploitation of destitute girls with the help of traffickers, said police.

Prostitution syndicate

The husband-wife duo Afaq and Saira controlled trafficking and prostitution syndicate with the help of accused Shamshad, Mumtaz, Shilpa and Pooja who worked as kotha managers. They were paid 15 per cent of the monthly earnings which runs into crores. Sarfaraz provided muscle power to the whole syndicate, said police.

The Crime Branch study of crime pattern revealed that girls from different states of the country and Nepal, most of them minors, were victims of this racket. They are sold to the kotha owners at G B Road at the rate of Rs 1-2 lakh.

“The young girls are thrashed, confined in hidden cells, intoxicated and kept starved for many days to force them in sex trade. The kotha operators recovered monthly 8-10 per cent of the amount as well as interest on it which was spent on buying them,” said a police officer.

Accused Saira who hailed from Andhra Pradesh used to be a sex worker at the kothas that she later owned. She was arrested several times in the past while her husband Afaq who hailed from UP was also arrested previously by the police.

Police unearthed properties and bank deposits to the tune of several crores besides four luxury cars owned by the couple. They possessed four properties in Delhi and two in Bangalore apart from indirectly owning portions of half a dozen Kothas on G B Road.