Vadodara, February 10: EMBOLDENED by Sunday’s arrest of five call girls from a hotel on the outskirts of the city, residents of Tandalja on Monday beat up a pimp and handed over two call girls, who were at the pimp’s house, to the police. All the seven girls, aged between 18 and 25 years, have been sent to the Nari Suraksha Gruh in Nizampura.A Tandalja resident alleged that the prostitution racket was going on in the locality for the last four-five years and several complaints were made to the Tandalja police in this regard. But they never took action, he alleged.

The two arrested on Monday have been identified as Salimbano Shahenshah Shaikh from Karnataka and Saraswatiben Raju Vishwajit Sonar from Guwahati.

Organised Crime Branch (OCB) Inspector H G Baria said the prostitution racket is being run in connivance with hoteliers on a large scale. Most of the pimps and prostitutes carried cell phones and hoteliers either contacted them directly, or gave their numbers to ‘customers’, said Baria.

Baria said one of the five girls arrested on Sunday told them that a ‘customer’ was willing to pay her Rs 4,500 for a night. Generally, those who take up rooms in big hotels are businessman and they are ready to pay a good amount, said Baria.

However, when it comes to hotels outside the city, the ‘customers’ are mainly truck drivers who pay anything between Rs 100 to Rs 200 for spending a night with a call girl, said a policeman.

Baria said the racket was being run by pimps from Mumbai in a very organised manner and it was difficult to trace them.