The Central Bureau of Investigation on Friday arrested a deputy superintendent of the Jammu and Kashmir police in connection with the infamous Kashmir sex scandal.
The CBI has so far arrested 15 persons, including two former ministers and senior police officers, in connection with the sex racket.
Sources said the CBI picked up DSP Mohammad Yousuf Mir, posted in the counterintelligence wing of the state police, for questioning.
Only on Thursday, a top bureaucrat and a hotel owner were arrested.
Sources said Mir was taken to the CBI temporary detention centre at Humhama near the Srinagar airport for questioning and identification.
Meanwhile, a local court on Friday sent senior bureaucrat Mohammad Iqbal Khandey and hotel manager Riyaz Ahmad Kawa, who were arrested in connection with the case, to a four-day CBI remand till July four.
Both of them were brought to the court by CBI sleuths minutes before its closure to seek the remand. Khandey, a 1978 batch IAS officer, was arrested on the basis of a statement by Sabeena, the alleged kingpin of the racket, which was corroborated by another woman named Yasmeena, the sources said.
The first bureaucrat to be arrested in this connection, Khandey was booked under section 5 of Immoral Trafficking (prevention) Act for procuring girls for prostitution. Kawa, manager of Hotel Naaz, had allegedly allowed his hotel to be used as a place for prostitution besides exploiting the women himself, and was arrested under sections 3 and 5 of ITPA. Section 3 of ITPA provides punishment for operating a brothel or allowing a person's premises to be used as one.
A total 14 people have been arrested so far in connection with the racket that sparked widespread protests in the Kashmir valley last month.
With PTI inputs