Bangalore network

Gang held for prostitution, extortion
16 Jun, 2007 l 0302 hrs ISTl
TIMES NEWS NETWORK

BANGALORE: Deepu earned at least Rs 25,000 daily. While his gang of women solicited customers, his gang, all men, robbed them. They ran this racket for three years as no victim lodged a complaint. Deepu's large team of women and men from across the state and Andhra Pradesh kept his prostitution and extortion business ticking over. One of the accused, Girish, even has a Master's degree in social work. However, Deepu and his 16 associates landed in prison after the central division police laid a trap for them on Friday. Deepu accommodated these women at a house in Yelahanka, RMC Yard and his house in Vidyaranyapura. An old woman, who doubled as a helper and bouncer, took care of them. Each girl earned anything between Rs 24,000 and Rs 30,000 per month. The women would solicit a rich "customer" and get into his car. They'd then tip-off their male colleagues, who followed them in another car and rob the ‘customer'. The gang used to fool the customer by pretending to rob the woman too. After an informant alerted the police about the gang, the team led by DCP (Central) B N S Reddy and Cubbon Park police inspector Ravi Shankar planned the operation. A decoy was sent to one of their usual meeting places, a hotel in Malleswaram. There, of the eight persons, the police nabbed four persons, even as the other four sped away in a van. Ravi Shankar and his team chased them and stopped them at Sadashivanagar. Based on their information, the other nine were arrested. The police seized three cars, three two-wheelers, nine mobile phones and Rs 17,150 from them. Those arrested have been remanded to judicial custody. A case has been lodged against the accused at the Channapatna police station. The other accused are: Prakash (24), Devaraj (22), Nagaraju (27), Madhu (22), Raju (21), Anil (20), Salman (24), Zabiullah (26), Deepa (19), Deepika (19), Reshma (23), Manu (19), Bhavani (27), Ranjani (23) and Ravi (24