BERHAMPUR: A man was arrested from Ghaziabad for allegedly abducting and torturing a woman from Kandhamal's Sarangagada. The accused, Ravi Srivastav, had got the woman through mediators in Uttar Pradesh on promises of marriage in May last year. But Srivastav, a driver working in Ghaziabad's Rajanagar area, did not marry her. Instead, he from Jhansi engaged her as a maid servant and tortured her regularly, police said.

The victim's mother, Prafulla Behera, lodged an FIR on June 7 narrating the plight of her girl. Her daughter had managed to call her up from Ghaziabad. The girl was traced through mobile tracking from which she had called up her mother, police said. "We have rescued the girl and arrested the boy who had taken her Ghaziabad on promises of marriage," SP (Kandhamal) J N Pankaj said on Wednesday.

During their interrogation, the woman complained against Srivastav. "We have detained one mediator Prabha Behera of Nuagaon in Kandhamal district," police said. The other middleman from Jhansi is absconding. Kandhamal police will contact its counterpart in Jhansi to nab him, police said. Social activists said this was only an isolated case in Kandhamal from where innocent girls are trafficked to other states through middlemen promising marriage and employment. TOI