Note: This story was updated at 5:03 p.m.
An Oak Ridge man was arrested and booked into Knox County jail on a trafficking charge on Saturday, one day after Tennessee and Knoxville officials announced that 32 men and women had been arrested in an operation to combat human trafficking.
Bond for Zubin Percy Parakh, 32, of Golfcrest Lane in Oak Ridge, has been set at $100,000 on the trafficking charge. A preliminary hearing has been set for May 31, according to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the Knox County Sheriff’s Office website.
The arrests and citations on prostitution and human trafficking-related charges were made as part of Operation Someone Like Me last week in Knoxville.
The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation said two of the men, including a children’s minister, Jason Kennedy, 46, of Knoxville, responded to ads for what they thought were girls under the age of 18. Kennedy was a children’s minister at Grace Baptist Church on Oak Ridge Highway in Karns, but he has since been fired. [Read more…]