Nine gamblers have also been arrested. The police said interrogation of the accused could lead to the unveiling of other such centres in the city.

The arrested women — Usha, Mamta, Neha, Pinki, Ram Baby and Radhika — are all in their mid-twenties, the police said. The pimps arrested — Mahendra and Mohammad Asif — have confessed to being involved in many other rackets in the city, the police said.

O P Chaudhary, station house officer of the Sector-20 police station, said, “We had information about such rackets cropping up in slums and the raid and search operations were carried out to catch some of them.”

The gamblers arrested have also been sent to police custody and are being interrogated, the police said.

While the police are claiming success, officers said this could be just the tip of an iceberg. After arrests were made a few years ago, many such rackets went underground and have been functioning secretively, officers said.