A 27-year-old Indian-origin man from Gujarat has been jailed for 10 years in the US for paying human traffickers to sexually assault a minor girl. Kavankumar Patel, a resident of Gujarat, was a staff member at a hotel in Nebraska's Omaha and assaulted the girl in January 2025. Patel faces immediate deportation to India upon completing his prison term.
The investigation began on January 6, 2025, when the police received a report of a theft and found evidence of sex trafficking. Officials from the Homeland Security Task Force and the Omaha Police Department then rescued two minor girls, aged 15 and 16, who had been brought to the AmericInn hotel from out of state to be sold for commercial sex.
"The two minor females reported that their traffickers had instructed that the minors must engage in sex with hotel staff for a reduced room rate or they would be kicked out of the hotel. Two hotel employees paid the trafficker to have sex with one of the minors, and a third hotel employee had sex with the other minor," the US Attorney's Office in Nebraska said in a statement on Thursday as quoted by NDTV.
Patel admitted that he used money from the hotel drawer to pay the traffickers to have sex with one of the minors at the hotel.
Several other AmericInn staff were reportedly part of the crime and had allowed the traffickers to stay in the hotel for several days.
The traffickers would post online advertisements for commercial sex and arrange commercial sex acts involving the minor victims. The minors reported having little food and feeling compelled to comply with the traffickers’ demands, the attorney's office said.
Among the traffickers are two Indian-origin men, Sumit Chaudhari and Vishal Goswami, and Eduardo Jose Perdomo, all of whom have been charged.
