Police on Wednesday arrested one more accused involved in the high-profile sex racket busted here on Tuesday. The arrestee was identified as Prasant Parida.

Parida is a close aide of the sex racket’s kingpin Sheikh Ibrahim, who was arrested by the Special Task Force (STF) of Crime Branch.

Sources said Parida was the linkman between Ibrahim and notorious pimp Sunil Meher, who is presently lodged in a jail. Sunil was allegedly trafficking the girls from Bangladesh with Parida’s help to operate sex trade in Bhubaneswar.

The matter came to the fore after a woman was allegedly assaulted in a hotel at Old Station Bazaar in the city in December last.

During course of investigation, the Commissionerate police found that victim was an illegal immigrant from Bangladesh and working as a sex worker in the capital.

Later, she was arrested for staying illegally in Bhubaneswar without valid documents. Reports said that she had come to Odisha on basis of a fake Aadhaar card which she had obtained during her stay in West Bengal.

The subsequent investigation revealed that apart from her around 20-25 girls from Bangladesh were also engaged in the sex trade.

According to sources, Sunil was supplying the girls from Bangladesh to Kolkata and Parida was involved in the racket by trafficking the girls from Kolkata to Odisha. The girls were handed over to Ibrahim and his wife Anjali, who were operating the racket in Bhubaneswar.

Based on inputs, the STF formed a team and arrested Ibrahim and Anjali from Danagohiri area under Pipili police station. The couple, the mastermind of the sex racket, was running it at a rented accommodation at Rath Road in Old Town.