Eleven people were taken into custody across Kerala on Tuesday and Wednesday morning including two organizers of the 2014 'Kiss of Love' protests in a police raid led by DIG S Sreejith with the help of cyber police, to tackle alleged online sex rackets.
Sources say that the Kerala police's cyber wing stumbled upon the alleged sex racket while investigating a complaint on a Facebook paedophile page called 'Kochu Sundarikal'.
Around five people have been arrested on the basis of the complaint, including the page admin, a man from Northern Kerala.
"We had filed an FIR in the 'Kochu Sundarikal' case and decided to pursue more links. This is when we stumbled on the sex racket, though it had nothing to do with the Facebook page. First we followed the leads of one particular woman who was used for sex work and supplied to clients. Then we tracked down two minors who had been brought in from Bengaluru," a senior police officer told The News Minute.
Some reports say model Resmi R Nair and her husband Rahul Pashupalan were amongst those taken into custody from Kochi while an infamous 'goonda' Akbar, a native of Kasargod was also detained on the allegations of being involved in the online sex trafficking of minor girls. "They have been taken in for questioning. After questioning, we will decide on the next course of action," said the police officer.
Four among the eleven taken into custody are women while there was also one minor, a native of Bengaluru, involved. While the police were trying to take these people into custody, three people escaped in a car, including two women and a man.
Incidentally, the complaint on 'Kochu Sundarikal', which lead to the two alleged rackets, was filed by another Facebook page called 'Sexually Frustrated Mallu', members of which were also part of Kiss of Love.
"This is just an investigation. Let the police prove there was a racket. Remember the Kerala police and others fabricated the entire ISRO spy scandal case and in that too a sex angle was used," Rahul Pasupalan's friend told TNM.
Kochu Sundarikal
The complaint against the Facebook page with photographs of minors was given by a resident of Thiruvananthapuram, who was associated with KoL and SFM movements. "The admin was operating out of India. He was a man in his late twenties and he had come to Kerala for his own wedding. We caught him after he logged on to the page again," the police officer said.
The police have also arrested others who had made vicious comments on pictures of minors.