New Delhi: Delhi police on June 11 claimed to have unearthed a prostitution racket involving high-profile people, with the arrest of a former Miss Bangalore from a five-star hotel.

Twenty one-year-old Ritu (not real name), beauty queen of Bangalore in 1999 and currently a model, was apprehended by Crime Branch personnel after an information that some girls from the fashion world were indulging in flesh trade in Delhi, deputy commissioner of police (crime and railways) Dependra Pathak said.

She has told her interrogators that she, along with another girl, had been sent by one Lata of Bangalore last week for prostitution, Pathak said.

The accused, coming from a middle-class background, claimed that she had taken to the profession two years back because of financial problems, he said.

"She disclosed her family is running through financial crisis and could not meet her high status expenditures, forcing her to engage in flesh trade," the DCP said.

Ritu also claimed she had come to Delhi for shooting her portfolio for submission to movie and serial producers, Pathak said.

On the operation, he said a decoy traced her mobile phone number and struck a deal for Rs 15,000.

When the decoy reached the lobby of the hotel, he paid Rs 2,000 in advance in presence of a shadow witness and as she led him to the room booked by her, she was arrested, he said.

A probe is being conducted to locate the contacts of Lata in Delhi and police suspects these to be some high-profile people.

PTI