Author: Times News Network
Publication: The Times of India
Date: December 23, 2003
At 18, Priti Bhatia, a B Com. first-year
student of South City College , had everything going for a beautiful life.
Now, her family fears she is wasting away in a Dubai brothel.
Priti has been missing since over
a month but the police are doing little to find her, although they claim
to have identified the family that was behind her abduction. The girl's
parents have tried everything they could - even flying to Mumbai to pay
the initial ransom demand of Rs 2 lakh - but now they have lost all hope
of seeing Priti again.
The police fear she has been smuggled
to Dubai soon after her abduction and that the ransom demand was a hoax.
The gang has hiked the ransom to Rs 5 lakh. A well organised girl-trafficking
racket entrenched in Kolkata and Mumbai is believed to be behind her disappearance.
The members of the accused family
- who love in Shah Alam Lane , Khidderpore -has gone undergorund.
"From the very beginning, we were
suspicious of Zubin Ahmed (17) of Shah Alam Lane , who introduced himself
as Rubin Mehta and kept harassing Priti. Initially, Zubin's father Shah
Nawaz Ahmed shot down the accusation, but when we threatened to lodge a
complaint with the police, he confessed that Priti was with his son in
Mumbai," Bhatia alleged.
Priti went missing on November 19.
"Me and my wife Kiran flew to Mumbai the moment the abductors concated
us and asked for Rs 2 lakh. But there, they hiked it to Rs 5 lakh which
they knew I could not immediately pay. I returned and lodged an FIR with
Watgunge police station, but nothing came of it," rues Priti's father Pradip
Bhatia, who owns a ladies' garments shop.
"We went to Mumbai with Zubin's
uncle Shakil Ahmed on November 25 to pay them Rs 2 lakh. But at a Mumbai
hotel, Zubin's maternal uncle Arif Hazra said the ransom had to be Rs 5
lakh. We then went to Meera Road police station, but they asked us to start
with Watgunge police station," Pradip said.
But what the couple learnt from
the Mumbai police sent a chill down their spine. The Mumbai cops have long
suspected Arif to be part of an international girl trafficking racket.
"Zubin's mother Tania Hazra lives in Dubai. We called her but she told
us that she knew nothing about Priti," said Kiran Bhatia. "Since then we
have lost all hope."
