A 60-year-old woman who was running a brothel in Mumbai of India by trafficking young girls from Nepal and forcing them to sell sex was arrested after 17 years of her conviction by the Kathmandu District Court. On November 23, 1998, the KDC had heard that Saraswati Lama aka Sonu was guilty in several sex trafficking cases in 1996. A jail term of 10 years was slapped on her in absentia. The Appellate Court had also upheld the KDC verdict. Police said Lama was directly involved in girls trafficking from Nepal to India and running a brothel in Mumbai at present also. Acting on a tip-off provided by the Maiti Nepal, a team deployed from the Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police apprehended her from Boudhha yesterday and presented her before the KDC today for the execution of the 1998 verdict. SP Kiran Bajracharya of CIB informed that police could get hold of the notorious brothel keeper, who had been dodging the law enforcement agencies till now when she had come to Kathmandu from Mumbai to take part in the death rituals of her mother, who recently died.

The KDC has sent the convict to the Central Jail in Jagannath Dewal to serve her term. Lama had bought a girl from traffickers including Krishna Pariyar and Ramesh Ram in Mumbai in September 1996, according to CIB. She had forced the victim to serve as a prostitute in her brothel for some days before selling her to another brothel, ran by her sister Meera, in Mumbai. Indian police had rescued several girls including the victim and handed over them to the Bhairahawa-based Maiti Nepal’s office. They were then brought to Kathmandu to take asylum at the Maiti Nepal’s hostel. The Maiti Nepal had filed a complaint against Lama and others, and a case was filed against them at the KDC in May 1998.