Varanasi: Eighteen women, including 16 from Nepal, who were part of a prostitution racket were rescued in New Delhi, police said on Tuesday.Based on a tip-off, Varanasi Crime Branch and the Delhi Police jointly raided a house under Vasant Vihar police station limits in Delhi on Tuesday.The police said the women were confined to the house for the past few days and were soon going to be trafficked to Gulf countries.

The police also arrested three men.The Nepali women were lured with the promise of jobs and were first brought to Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, said the police official.Two Nepalese women managed to escape from the clutches of the traffickers in the first week of July.

They told Nepal police about the racket, who in turn contacted the Nepal embassy, the official said.Based on the Nepal embassy's communique, Varanasi police raided half-a-dozen locations in the temple town last week.

They arrested a man identified as Jai Singh under the Shivpur police station limits.During interrogation, Jai Singh said a group of Nepali women were going to be trafficked to the middle-east.

Based on the inputs of the two freed women and Singh's statement, Varanasi Crime Branch undertook the joint operation with Delhi Police.The rescued girls/women were shifted to YMCA this evening, a senior official of the Delhi Police said.