By IANS
Akola (Maharashtra) : The state police Tuesday arrested the woman behind a sex racket that was exposed when a teenaged girl accused senior government officers here of sexually exploiting her and many others. She also met Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil and narrated her travails.
Nitu Takvat, the main accused, will be in police custody till Feb 17, and the state government has ordered a probe into the matter.
Special Inspector General of Police Subodh Kumar Jaiswal, who recorded the college student’s statement Monday, was present when the girl accompanied by a friend met Patil, who holds the home portfolio, at Amravati, about 150 km from here.
While announcing a high-level state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe, Patil told reporters in Amravati Monday that he was willing to hear out the girl if she so desired.
The girl was Tuesday escorted back to her home in Akola district, which is part of the Amravati Division of Maharashtra and is about 800 km from Mumbai.
The girl said in an affidavit, a copy of which was sent to local Marathi daily Deshonnati, that Nitu Takvat allegedly ran the sex racket. After trapping her into it, Takvat forced her to entertain many highly placed officers in the police and other government departments besides other influential people.
The girl stated in her affidavit that many girls like her are being exploited in the racket. Deshonnati Akola resident editor Shriman Mane told IANS that five girls have already approached the newspaper willing to relate their plight on sworn affidavits.
In her affidavit, the girl has accused District Superintendent of Police Deepak Pandey, Deputy Municipal Commissioner Mohan Nagalkar, Special Government Prosecutor Ganesh Pathak and Police Inspector Sanjay Pardesi as well as other influential people of sexual exploitation.
Though the girl told reporters late Sunday night that she had implicated the superintendent of police under pressure from a police official, she said she had give him a clean chit after being pressurised by him. Pandey has denied his involvement.
In her affidavit, the girl said a mobile phone shop owner, Jagdish Sharma, took her to Nitu Takvat’s flat on the pretext of giving her a job. At Nitu’s residence she was offered tea laced with a sedative and her nude pictures were snapped in a state of unconsciousness, she said.
She added that Nitu forced her to satisfy the lust of several men, including those she has named in the affidavit, and many others whom she could recognise only by face.
Denying the girl’s allegations, Nitu told the press Monday that a reporter from the newspaper along with the girl’s boyfriend and two others had tried to pressurise her to extract money from Pandey for hushing up the matter.
Shriman Mane, however, told IANS that Nitu could not even recognise the reporter who she said approached her for bribe, either by name or by face when he was introduced to her by another name in the newspaper office last week.
Apart from blackmailing her over the nude pictures, Nitu and her accomplices also beat her up several times and threatened to kill her if she refused to obey them.
Nitu admitted both to the media and in her affidavit that she knew Pandey and others named by the girl in connection with his property deals.
Meanwhile, state women’s commission chairperson Rajni Satav talked to Director General of Police P.S. Pasricha by phone from Nanded and sought a report on the case.
Several women activists, including commission member Yashomati Thakur, called on Patil, Jaiswal and Divisional Commissioner Bhaskar Munde to request them that the Akola police be kept out of the investigation as the girl had pointed fingers at some of them.