By IANS
Akola (Maharashtra) : A high level probe was Tuesday launched to investigate an 18-year-old girl’s allegation that several government officers here were involved in a sex racket to which she fell victim.
The college student 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 in an affidavit, a copy of which she sent to Marathi daily Deshnonnati.
Akola district is located in the Amravati Division of Maharashtra and is about 800 km from state capital Mumbai.
Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil Monday told reporters at Amravati, about 150 km from here, that a high level team of state Crime Investigation Department (CID) will investigate the matter under the supervision of Special Inspector General of Police Subodh Kumar Jaiswal.
“I am ready to personally hear out the girl if she so desires though it is against established norms for any minister to interfere with the investigation being carried out in his department,” Patil said.
Though the girl told reporters late Sunday night that she had implicated the superintendent of police him under pressure from a police official, Patil said the CID would investigate whether the girl exonerated Pandey under duress.
Denying his involvement in the matter, Pandey told the press that the police was aware of the existence of a sex racket operating here and that it was just about to expose it after over a month long investigation.
Jaiswal Monday recorded the girl’s statement at Amravati, where she was taken from Akola via Wardha. In Wardha too, her statement was video-recorded in the presence of Wardha district superintendent of police Aswati Dorje.
In her affidavit given to Deshonnati, the girl said a mobile phone shop owner Jagdish Sharma, to whom she was introduced by a friend about a year ago, took her to the alleged sex racket operator 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, the girl 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.
Apart from blackmailing her on the basis of the nude pictures, Nitu and her accomplices also beat her up several times and threatened to kill her and her kin if she refused to obey them, the girl stated, adding that she was one of many victims caught in the racket.
Denying the girl’s allegations, Nitu told the press Monday that the newspaper reporter along with the girl’s boyfriend and two others tried to pressurise her to extract money from Pandey for hushing up the matter.
Deshonnati’s Akola resident editor Shrimant Mane, however, told IANS that Nitu could not even recognize 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.
Nitu admitted both while talking to the press and in her affidavit that she knew Pandey and other government officers named by the girl in connection with her property deals.
According to Mane, the girl has stated in her affidavit that Pandey, a regular visitor to Nitu’s flat, was provided with some other girl when she refused to entertain him because she was unwell that time. The girl alleged that she, along with others, had to entertain Nitu’s clients both in her flat and their homes.