Kenyan Immigration Minister Linah Chebii Kilimo personally led police to the rescue of five Indian women immigrants who were being forced to sing in a plush nightclub and locked up during the day, officials said on Thursday.
Kilimo stormed into the nightclub in upmarket Parklands estate late on Tuesday and rescued the girls after she received an SMS on the plight of the women, aged between 20 and 29, Isaac Kegode, commander of Nairobi’s police division, said.
”This is a cartel of people who are taking advantage of desperate girls. The bottom line is that they were used as sex objects as they sing at night,” Kegode said, adding that the minister took the women to an undisclosed location in the capital for safe custody.
”They claimed that their travel documents had been confiscated after their arrival in March, then [they were] forced to sing overnight, sometimes until 7am, and locked in a room for the rest of the day,” he said.
Police are searching for the owner of the nightclub, who allegedly lured the women into the country by promising them lucrative employment.
”They say they were shocked to be later lured into this dirty business [prostitution]. We are investigating who is behind this,” Kilimo told the Standard newspaper.
Kenyan police and immigration officials are also probing 69 Bangladeshi nationals who were arrested in the port city of Mombasa last week for links to terrorism, drugs and human trafficking, but Bangladeshi Minister of Foreign Affairs M Morshed Khan has said the men could be job seekers. — Sapa-AFP