SRINAGAR: Police have booked the house owner, whose house was being used as a ‘prostitution centre’ in the Bagh-e-Mehtab locality of Srinagar outskirts.
   Locals have demanded strict action against the house owner for renting his vacant house to tainted tenants without any police verification.
  As reported earlier, police arrested 8 persons, including 4 female sex workers from Srinagar, 2 kingpins from Pulwama, and two customers also from Srinagar during a raid in the Bagh-e-Mehtab area.
   Police said that the rented house was being used as a prostitution centre.
   The house owner has been identified as Altaf Hussain Afaqi son of late Asadullah Afaqi, a resident of Zalosa village of Charar-e-Sharif Budgam, who presently lives at Chanapora.
   As per the police, the whole racket was run from Afaqi’s rented house.
   “How can he rent his house to people whom he doesn’t know and that too without any police verification? The house owner must be taken to task and booked under relevant sections of law as he brought disrepute to the whole Bagh-e-Mehtab locality,” an elderly man from the area told news agency Kashmir News Trust.
   Another man from the local Masjid Committee while appreciating the role of police said that locals were shocked after the news broke. “It’s a colony and nobody knows anybody. We demand strict action against the house owner first and then against others,” he said.
   Sources said that the house owner is a retired government employee who is a native of Budgam district and owns 3 houses, each one at Zalosa Charar-e-Sharif, Chanapora and Bagh-e-Mehtab. His late father had been a prolific writer known for his works on Sheikh-ul-Aalam (RA) while his brother runs a popular school in Budgam district.
   Police sources said that Altaf Hussain Afaqi has been booked for not bothering to verify the background of tenants through police as prescribed by the law.
   For the unversed, two kingpins, Irhad Bhat son of Shaban Bhat, a resident of Kadlabal Pampore Pulwama and Shafi Hajam son of Qayoom Hajam from Karimabad Pulwama have already been booked by police while a formal FIR vide number 19/2023 under section 3,4,8 of Immortal trafficking act stands registered at police station Chanapora. [KNT]