The Barnala police today busted a major sex racket being run in a hotel owned by Gurjinder Singh Sidhu, a senior leader and state president of the ex-servicemen wing of the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), in Kachehri Chowk here.
The police has arrested 12 girls and an official of the agriculture department and his partner,also a government servant.
Sources said that traffic inspector Jasveer Kaur, after seeing a vehicle with tinted glass, bearing the registration number PB-19C-5036, outside a hotel at about 1 pm, started looking for its owner and enquired from the hotel about the whereabouts of the vehicle owner.
Sources added that after the owner of the vehicle came out of the hotel, the traffic police issued him a ticket (challan) for putting black film on his vehicle illegally.
Sources further said that while the traffic police authorities were issuing ticket to the owner of the vehicle, they spotted a girl in school uniform, who had probably come with the owner of the vehicle.
The girl was trying to flee from the back gate of the hotel.
The sources added that the girl was nabbed due to the alertness of police personnel.
Sources said that smelling rat, a police team led by Deputy Superintendent of Police, Barnala, Rupinder Singh Bhardwaj reached the spot and started searching the hotel.
They added that during the search, police nabbed six couples including an agriculture department official, a lady who is a government employee, a woman employee of SLIET Longowal, a boy from Moga, the son of a Muslim Akali Leader along with a minor girl of a government high school, and three other couples.
Sources added that the couples were found in a compromising position in the rooms and tried to flee from the hotel but police managed to arrest them all.
The records were seized and the police sealed the hotel.
The police has registered a case under Immoral Trafficking Act against the six couples and have started hunting for the hotel owner who fled from the spot.
As the news about the police busting the sex racket spread in the area, people residing in the vicinity of the hotel expressed happiness about the police action against the influential SAD leader who is the owner of the hotel.
DSP Rupinder Bhardwaj, however, refused to divulge anything on the issue saying, “I am busy somewhere.”
