Before This Story — How This Post Handles What Happened
Sources, names, and editorial choices explained
Every fact in this post is verified across NDTV, Indian Express, Hindustan Times, The Bridge Chronicle, Dainik Prabhat (Marathi), News18 Hindi, Odisha Bytes, and official statements from DCP Somay Munde (Zone 7) and Senior Police Inspector Govind Jadhav. Sankita Mukherjee is named in this post — her identity has been confirmed by multiple credible outlets including NDTV, Indian Express, and Saam TV/Esakal. She is named because she was a human being, not a statistic, and because anonymising trafficking victims can sometimes further their erasure. The four other women rescued from the spa have not been publicly identified by police and are not named here. The spa’s owner has not been named in verified police statements as of time of writing — that absence is noted explicitly. The eyewitness allegation about police response time is presented as a disputed allegation, not established fact. 🧠
Sankita Mukherjee Was 30 Years Old. She Was From West Bengal. She Will Not Be Going Home.
Monday, 23 February 2026. Viman Nagar, Pune. 3:30 in the afternoon.
A police team led by Senior Police Inspector Govind Jadhav of Vimantal Police Station reached the City Space building. They were not there by chance. They had already sent a decoy customer to The Roots Spa — a standard operational procedure — to independently confirm that illegal activity was taking place before committing a team to the raid. The confirmation came back. The team moved.
When officers knocked on the door — and then broke through the glass entrance with panchas (official witnesses) present — they found what they expected and worse.
Across separate rooms inside the spa: women, and clients.
In one specific room: the spa manager, a second woman, and Sankita Mukherjee.
When the police entered, the manager and Sankita bolted toward the balcony. Before officers could reach them, the manager grabbed the drainage pipe on the building’s exterior and began climbing down. Sankita followed.
The pipe did not hold.
Sankita Mukherjee fell head-first onto the parking area below. She sustained severe head injuries. She was taken to Sassoon General Hospital. Doctors declared her dead during treatment.
She was 30 years old. She was from West Bengal. She was, according to DCP Somay Munde, a victim of the racket operating from that building — not its operator.
The Spa Manager — Hussain Sheikh, 30
Hussain Sheikh is 30 years old. He was recently appointed as manager of The Roots Spa.
He was in the same room as Sankita when the police entered. He made the decision to flee through the window. He reached the drainage pipe first and had already begun descending when it gave way.
Sheikh sustained serious fractures to his leg in the fall. He was admitted to Sassoon General Hospital, where News18 Hindi reported he was placed in the ICU. His condition is described as stable.
DCP Munde confirmed that Sheikh has been booked for illegal activities under anti-trafficking provisions. An FIR has been filed. He is under police custody from the hospital.
His age — 30, the same as Sankita Mukherjee — is not a detail to pass over. He was not a seasoned criminal organisation’s senior operator. He was a recently appointed manager of an establishment that had been under police surveillance. Whether he was fully aware of the network above him, or a mid-level participant in a structure that extends well beyond one spa in one building, is a question the investigation must answer.
Why Police Were Already Watching The Roots Spa
The Vimantal Police Station team did not arrive at The Roots Spa in response to a single anonymous tip on the day of the raid. Police sources confirmed to Hindustan Times and Indian Express that the spa had been under police radar for some time before the operation was mounted.
The standard Pune protocol for sex racket busts — confirmed in the Dainik Prabhat Marathi report — involves sending a decoy customer to the establishment before any raid is conducted. The decoy’s confirmation triggers the formal operation, conducted with panchas present to ensure legal admissibility of evidence.
This matters for a specific reason. It means the operation at The Roots Spa was not impulsive or poorly planned. It was a surveilled, intelligence-backed raid with proper procedure in place. The tragedy that followed was not the result of a rogue action by individual officers. It was the consequence of a panic response from inside the spa — from a woman who, whatever her circumstances brought her to that building, made a split-second decision that cost her her life.
The operational question this raises is not whether the raid should have happened. It is whether the protocol adequately accounts for the fear response of trafficking victims who have no reason to believe that the people knocking intend to help them.
The Four Women Rescued — What We Know and What We Do Not
Police confirmed that four other women were present inside The Roots Spa and were rescued during the operation. DCP Munde’s initial statement to Hindustan Times cited three rescued women; subsequent reporting by The Bridge Chronicle, Dainik Prabhat, and others confirmed four.
The Dainik Prabhat Marathi report states that when police broke through the door, they found four women and four men inside the premises. The four men are presumed to include clients; their status in the FIR is part of the ongoing investigation.
Beyond these numbers, verified details about the four rescued women are limited in current police statements. Their states of origin, how they were brought to Pune, how long they had been at the spa, and what trafficking network connected them to the establishment — all of these questions are part of the investigation that is now underway and have not been publicly confirmed as of the time of writing.
What is known from the broader Viman Nagar spa raid pattern — including the January 2026 Signature Thai Spa bust just four weeks earlier — is that women rescued from these establishments are typically found to have been lured from source states including Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar, Assam, and in some cases from abroad (Thailand, in previous cases), using offers of legitimate work. The trafficking pipeline operates through social media contact between recruiters and vulnerable women, followed by controlled transport to Pune.
The four rescued women are in police care. They require immediate trauma support, legal aid, and clear repatriation pathways. Whether they are receiving this — under the standard operating procedures that Maharashtra Police is obligated to follow — is not yet on the public record.
Illegal dance bar raid: Mira Road Police Bust Hidden Bar
This is not the first time we have covered systemic illegal operations hiding in plain sight. For context on how deeply embedded these networks can be, read our previous investigation on a similar front:
The Owner — An Identity That Must Be Named Publicly
This is the most significant gap in current public reporting.
Hussain Sheikh was the manager of The Roots Spa. He was recently appointed — meaning he is not the person who set up the trafficking network, obtained the spa licence, built the customer contact system, or brought the women to Pune.
The person who did all of those things is the spa owner — and as of the confirmed verified reporting available at time of writing, that individual’s name has not been published by police or confirmed in any of the major outlets covering this case.
This is not an unusual gap in the immediate 48-hour reporting window. But it is the most important gap. In every spa racket bust across Viman Nagar and Pune’s wider commercial zones over the past six years — from the 2019 Thai nationals case to the July 2025 Dhanori and Baner triple raid — the pattern is consistent: the manager is arrested at the scene, the owner is typically named later (if at all), and the network above the owner is rarely dismantled.
The FIR registered at Vimantal Police Station must include the spa owner as a named accused — under PITA, the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita provisions on trafficking, and the Prevention of Damage to Public Property Act applied in the Bahraich textbook case for reference scale. The investigation’s credibility depends on whether the owner is named, arrested, and charged within days — not weeks.
Senior Police Inspector Govind Jadhav’s team is running the investigation. The name of the owner of The Roots Spa is the question his team must answer publicly — and soon.
The Eyewitness Allegation — What It Says and What It Does Not Yet Prove
The Bridge Chronicle’s report on this incident includes a specific and serious eyewitness claim: that after Sankita Mukherjee and Hussain Sheikh fell from the building, police personnel remained at the spot for approximately 20 minutes before arranging to shift the injured to hospital.
Senior police officers have denied this allegation. DCP Somay Munde’s public statements do not address the timeline of the medical response specifically. News18 Hindi confirms both were taken to Sassoon General Hospital.
This allegation is presented here as an unverified claim from a single eyewitness. It is not established fact. But it is a specific, time-bound, publicly stated claim about a police response to a life-threatening injury — and it cannot be resolved by a denial. It requires the investigation to produce a timestamped account: when the call to medical services was made, when the ambulance or police vehicle moved, when Sankita arrived at Sassoon, and when she was declared dead.
That timeline is public interest information. It should be part of the formal inquiry. If the eyewitness is wrong, the record will show it. If the eyewitness is right, the record must show that too.
Viman Nagar’s Recurring Raid Cycle — Six Years, Same Postcode, Same Pattern
The Roots Spa raid on 23 February 2026 is the latest entry in a documented series:
| Date | Establishment | Location | Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| November 2018 | Unnamed massage centre | Viman Nagar | 3 Thai women rescued; 2 agents arrested |
| January 2019 | Unnamed spa, Avenue II | Viman Nagar | 4 Thai nationals rescued; 1 arrested, 1 absconding |
| July 2025 | Mansion Spa, near Datta Mandir Chowk | Viman Nagar | Manager Kunal Ghodke arrested; 3 accused booked |
| July 2025 | Luxe Spa | Dhanori (adjacent) | 5 women incl 2 minors rescued; manager arrested |
| January 2026 | Signature Thai Spa, near Datta Mandir Chowk | Viman Nagar | 5 women rescued; operator arrested; POS machines seized |
| 23 February 2026 | The Roots Spa, City Space building | Viman Nagar | 4 women rescued; Sankita Mukherjee dead; Hussain Sheikh arrested |
This is six documented incidents in the same locality over six years. In every case, managers are arrested. In many cases, operators are charged. The networks rebuild in the same neighbourhood, sometimes in the same streets, sometimes in buildings a few hundred metres apart.
The question this table forces is not “did police act?” They clearly did. The question is: why does the same neighbourhood require the same raid, repeatedly, over six years, with the networks intact enough to keep operating?
The answer has components that go beyond policing. It involves who issues spa and trade licences in Pune’s commercial zones, what the verification process looks like, how often those licences are reviewed after issuance, and whether municipal inspection of registered wellness businesses ever actually happens.
Senior PI Govind Jadhav’s team raids. The Pune Municipal Corporation issues the licence. Both parts of that system need scrutiny.
What Has to Change — The Rescue Cannot Be the Only Intervention
The raids are necessary. They are not sufficient.
- A mandatory victim-aware pre-entry protocol: When intelligence confirms trafficking victims are present inside a location, the raid approach should include a pre-entry communication — through a non-uniformed intermediary, an NGO partner, or a translated message — that distinguishes the police arrival as a rescue rather than an arrest situation. Sankita Mukherjee had every reason to fear law enforcement. The protocol must account for that fear before a team reaches the door.
- The SOP’s victim separation and support mandate must be enforced: The four rescued women from The Roots Spa are entitled, under Maharashtra’s own protocols and under national anti-trafficking SOPs, to immediate shelter, trauma counselling, legal aid, and repatriation support within clearly defined timelines. A named responsible officer should be publicly accountable for each of these provisions.
- Spa licensing must include periodic verification: A wellness spa licence in Pune is relatively straightforward to obtain. There is no systematised, periodic spot-verification that checks whether the licence-holder’s business is operating within the terms of its registration. A six-month re-verification cycle — conducted jointly by municipal inspectors and police — would interrupt the rebuild cycle between raids. This is not complex. It is a resource and will question.
- The owner must be named and charged: Hussain Sheikh is the manager. He will face charges. The person above him — who owns the establishment, who built or inherited the trafficking supply chain, who takes the income — must not remain unnamed in the investigation. Every previous Viman Nagar case that failed to dismantle the network at ownership level is the reason the table above has six rows.
- Trauma-informed investigation of surviving women: The four rescued women are witnesses to a trafficking operation. Their testimony — taken through trained female officers, in a language they understand, with legal representation present — is the most valuable asset the investigation has for building a case against the network above Hussain Sheikh. The SOP mandates this. Enforcement of it is the variable.
If You Need Help, or Know Someone Who Does
- CHILDLINE: 1098 (24-hour, free, for children in distress)
- Women in distress helpline (Maharashtra Police): 1091
- Rescue Foundation Pune: 020-26693300
- iCall mental health helpline: 9152987821
- IJM India (anti-trafficking legal support): 011-42462288
If you are a journalist, social worker, or member of the public with specific information about the owner of The Roots Spa or the network that supplied women to the establishment, the Vimantal Police Station investigating team can be reached at Pune Police’s official contact, and information can be submitted confidentially.
Kumar Is Following This Story
The investigation is live. The owner has not been named. The eyewitness allegation about response time has not been formally resolved. The four rescued women’s support status is not on the public record. NewsPatron will follow each of these threads.
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