Falak case: Woman arrested for forcing girl into flesh trade

One more person has been arrested for allegedly forcing a teenaged girl, who got a battered two-year-old admitted in AIIMS, into prostitution, police said today.

With this, a total of four persons have been taken into custody in this case, which includes the teenager's father Jitender Gupta on charges of abandoning her.

"We have arrested one more woman Arti in this case. She is also charged with forcing the girl into prostitution. She was an associate of Pooja who was arrested earlier along with her husband Sandeep Pandey," a senior police official said.

Pandey and his wife Pooja were arrested yesterday along with her father.
The 15-year-old girl was in news after she brought baby Falak, who was allegedly beaten up by her, to AIIMS for treatment claiming that she was her mother. Alleging that her father used to physically torture her, the girl had eloped from home and later met Rajkumar, who entrusted the girl with Falak two months ago.

The official said the girl was sexually abused by several men. Pooja, he said, had taken her to Etah in Uttar Pradesh where she was allegedly forced to marry an old man. Arti was her alleged associate in Etah, he said.

When she refused to marry the old man, she was raped allegedly by Pandey, the official said, maintaining that after this, the girl was again brought to Delhi by the couple and was kept at her house in Tughlakabad, where she was again allegedly sexually exploited by Sandeep repeatedly.

The arrests came following instructions from Child Welfare Committee, which is looking into the case of the teenaged girl, that a case of cruelty and abuse be registered against her father and a separate case against four persons who allegedly sexually abused her.