The raid, supervised by ACP K K Patel, is one of the biggest in the ongoing police drive against organised prostitution in the city. The arrested persons have been booked under sections of the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA).

The raids were conducted at the Noor Jehan Building owned by Mohammed Yakub Banarasi and another building owned by absconding criminal Mushtaq Nanwala, both on Mirza Swami Road near Muglisara. All the 80 arrested were produced at the district and sessions court and sent to judicial custody.

All the rooms in the Noor Jehan building had been rented out to sex-workers. Altogether 53 sex-workers and 17 clients were taken into custody from the building. Immediately afterwards, the police also raided a brothel run by one Savita Ravji Patel, Nanwala's maid, and arrested seven sex-workers and three clients from the brothel.

This raid, like most others, was conducted on Sunday night when the area is busiest.

The police have been relentlessly raiding the red light area, for the first time even using sections of PASA and PITA. A Delhi based voluntary organisation, the Bharatiya Patita Uddhar Sabha (BPUS), has already approached the National Human Rights Commission against the arrest of sex-workers under PITA and PASA.

They plan to move court soon in this regard. The police, meanwhile, have continued the raids which began this January, immediately after Kuldip Sharma took over as the city police chief.