Sex racketeers changed tactic, went online in ’17
Ads give out contact details, semi-nude pics of women
HYDERABAD DEC. 25 Those running prostitution rackets keep throwing up new challenges for the police. What was noticed in 2017 was them changing tack from running brothels from rented property for a few months to sending escorts to residences/farm houses of customers by cab.
Malkajgiri special operations team (SOT) inspector G. Naveen Kumar said, “The racket organisers put up advertisements on online platform Locanto with seminude pictures of escorts. When a customer calls them up, he is asked to pay 50 per cent of the charge to get a contact number of an ‘escort’ to chat up with on WhatsApp. After a time and date is fixed, the pimp and the escort drive to the place in a cab.”
Advertisements on these online platforms openly welcome customers with numbers, pictures and services they can choose from — ranging from ‘men seeking women’ to ‘women seeking men’ to ‘casual encounters’.
Frequent crackdowns earlier this year led the organisers be more discreet. “The gangs started using other methods to deal with clients. Once a customer dials the phone numbers mentioned online, an agent asks him which hotel or lodge he is staying in, and then checks with the hotel reception to confirm. He then calls the customer to give the details of the escort and the charges,” said a senior official from the Task Force team. Organisers also ‘share’ the escorts with their counterparts in other states for a week or a month.
One aspect which misses the eye is that the escorts, who actually are victims, are very vulnerable to danger, said North Zone DCP B. Sumathi. “The girl is dropped off to the place by men and her safety is at risk. She can be assaulted against her wish and even get killed. Such an incident would obviously be hushed up and not reported by the racketeers.”
City police officials say that phone numbers listed on the ads are often registered on the names of dead people with SIM cards bought with fake identity papers. A large number of sex workers belong to Kolkata and Mumbai, police said.
The latest modus operandi currently is using the guise of providing massage services at home. SOT officials of LB Nagar arrested one Pendam Sravan, 28, owner of Diamond Family Saloon, for secretly running a prostitution racket under the guise of home service for males. “Sravan uploaded pictures of massage girls working in his saloon on a website and contacted customers for services. He personally took the women to the customer’s place,” said LB Nagar SOT inspector P. Venkateswarlu.
According to police’s annual report, there were 82 cases in Rachakonda Commissionerate alone, in which 106 racket organisers were held and 151 victims belonging to Telangana, AP, Jharkhand, UP were rescued. As many as 31 brothels were raided.