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Kavita Bajeli-Datt in New Delhi
The police have stumbled on a sensational racket involving doctors who injected minor girls in the infamous red light district of Delhi, G B Road, with hormones to boost their physical growth.
The police made the findings when they raided brothels on G B Road and rescued a record number of 38 minor girls from poor families who had been forced into prostitution after being lured with promises of jobs.
The raids began on Thursday evening and continued into early Friday, and led to the arrest of 15 brothel owners and 10 pimps.
The police said some of the minor girls of one brothel were being injected with hormones.
"We are trying to find the doctor who lives in the area and is linked to the racket," said a senior police officer.
"We had heard that this had been going on. But when the girls confirmed it we were shocked," he said.
The official said the girls showed on their hands tell tale marks of injections and burnt cigarettes - a sign of torture.
"They told us that the injection was to help them to grow fast. Most of them did not even understand its implications," he added.
The police also seized certificates issued by a nursing home that showed minor girls, who were under 18 years of age, as adults.
Police officers said it was a very serious offence that a nursing home was brazenly faking the age of minor girls.
"We are investigating one of its doctors. We will inform the Medical Council about him," an official said.
Delhi Police said they were discovering one racket after another in recent months since turning the heat on the 100-odd brothels on G B Road that is home to some 3,500 sex workers.
Assistant Commissioner of Police B K Singh said that most of the minor girls, who were either kidnapped or lured from Nepal, Bangladesh or other Indian states, were confined in dark and dingy rooms and tortured if they did not agree to work for the brothels.
"They were not given food and sometimes raped to force them into prostitution," the official added.
"This month alone we have rescued 93 girls, out of whom 60 turned out to be minors," he said.
He said, "This is one of the biggest raids on the brothels. For the first time so many minors have been rescued."
Indo-Asian News Service
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