Patna, Feb 26 : Five minor girls who fled from their respective houses on February 2, were rescued from Maharashtra's Pune by Bihar Police.

The police said that they were habitual of an online game Free Fire. Samastipur Police with the help of a special cell team of Bihar Police managed to rescue the girls from Pune.

The police also arrested four youths. They are the residents of Deoghar in Jharkhand, Jokihat in Bihar's Araria district, Sahadatpur in Uttar Pradesh and Rajpura in Punjab.

On Sunday, the accused were produced to Samastipur district court which sent them to judicial custody.

'We have received a complaint in Vibhutipur police station about four girls of one family including two sisters and two cousin sisters of Kalyanpur village who disappeared from their respective houses on February 2 this year. The district SP immediately constituted a joint team of special cell and district police for the investigation of this case. On the basis of technical and scientific investigations, we managed to trace the locations of the girls in Pune city of Maharashtra. Accordingly, we conducted a raid and rescued them. One more girl, who is from Punjab, was also recovered from the same location. They were held captive in a room,' said Shivam Kumar, DSP of Samastipur Sadar.

'When we questioned the girls, one of them revealed that they were playing an online game Free Fire for the last 3-4 months and came in contact with a cyber criminal. He managed to establish contacts with the four sisters through that girl. All four girls belong to the same family. That man influenced those four girls to flee from their respective houses,' Kumar said.

'After fleeing from their respective houses, all four girls reached Rajpura in Punjab and then reached Pune. The girls were connected with one person each from Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha, Pune, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh in the game. They were jointly playing a Free Fire game. Further raids are on to nab other accused,' Kumar said.

'The accused are part of a human trafficking nexus as they were planning to send the girls to foreign countries,' he added.

/IANS