Spa centres, hotels raided across Gujarat in crackdown on flesh trade; over 100 arrested

Ahmedabad: The Gujarat police have arrested more than 100 people after raiding 805 spas, massage parlours, and hotels as part of a state-wide drive against flesh trade, the government said in a release on Friday.

The mega crackdown was carried out on Thursday, a day after Gujarat Minister of State for Home Harsh Sanghavi directed police officials to raid all premises that were suspected of running flesh trade in the guise of legal business.

During his interaction with senior police officers via video conferencing, Sanghavi expressed the Gujarat government’s resolve to eradicate the flesh trade being run at hotels and in the guise of spa centres, said the release.

Accordingly, the police raided 851 locations across the state on Thursday and arrested 105 persons involved in “illegal” activities, said the release, adding 103 FIRs (first information reports) have been registered.

The police have initiated a process to cancel the licences of 27 spa centres and hotels for being involved in illegal activities, said the release. The crackdown will continue in the days to come, it said.

In Ahmedabad, police teams raided nearly 350 spa and massage parlours and booked nine centres for violating the city police commissioner’s notification regarding the submission of names, photos and contact details of the owners as well as employees, said Joint Commissioner of Police, city crime branch, Neeraj Badgujar.

To check if spa centres were providing prostitutes to their customers, police also sent some dummy customers to a few suspected centres, said Badgujar, adding that none of the spas covered during the drive was found to be running flesh trade.