Five women rescued from Goa ‘massage parlour’

Five women were Thursday rescued from a massage parlour in Goa’s Porvorim where they were made to provide sexual services to patrons and a Marathi film actor and three other people, including a woman, were arrested from the spot, police said.

Four of the five women rescued by the police from Lotus beauty parlour, in an upscale Porvorim neighbourhood, were from West Bengal’s Darjeeling. The remaining one was from Mumbai.

Speaking to reporters on the spot, Auda Viegas, a women’s rights activist who accompanied police on the raid, said that the women were being kept in an inhuman condition and made to perform sexual services under the guise of a massage.

“Under the facade of massage parlour, something else was going on. The girls were also kept under inhuman conditions in a small cubicle, after they did what they were told to do in the massage parlour. They could not even communicate with anyone,” Viegas said.

Police have not officially disclosed the identity of the actor, but sources said that the artiste has acted in several Marathi films and has played a lead actor in Marathi television serials. Three other patrons of the massage parlour were also detained and would be soon formally arrested.

The rescued girls have been presently taken to the Porvorim police station and will later be taken to a state-run women’s home. The raid was still on as of 11.30 p.m. and police were seizing computers and CCTV footage from the parlour.