POLICE SEAL NAGPUR’S RED LIGHT AREA

NAGPUR: Days after clamping section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code in Ganga-jamuna locality in central Nagpur, the Nagpur police Thursday issued a notification under the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act (PITA), in an effort to clamp down on sex workers. Ganga Jamuna is a wellknown red-light area that dates back to the Bhonsale regime that ruled over 200 years ago. While PITA does not penalize sex work, it does hold the act of soliciting sex work, and keeping a brothel, among other things, to be an offence. The notification in effect will mean that the persons practicing sex work in the area will not be able to income. The notification issued under Section 7(1) (b) of PITA allows the police commissioner to demarcate areas in public places where sex work cannot be done. The notification also appealed to citizens to send their complaints to the commissioner’s office. “It was brought to my notice that several offences have been registered during the last five years under PITA in or in the vicinity of Balaji Mandir, Chinteshwar Mandir, Baba Kamlishah Dargah, Durga Devi Mandir, Sharda Devi Mandir, Radha Swami Satsang, NMC’S Chinteshwar Hindi Primary School, Hindustan High School (all these places are situated in the vicinity of Ganga Jamuna),” stated the notification which was signed by the Nagpur commissioner of police Amitesh Kumar. Shashi Thakur, a sex worker of the area and also one of the working committee members of the Amrapali Sanghatna, a sex workers’ union at Ganga Jamuna condemned the police notification and sought an intervention from the state government. Senior Nationalist Congress Party leader Jwala Dhote condemned the police notification and said that they would launch an agitation along with sex workers. “Police cannot take such arbitrary action without providing the sex workers alternative employment,” she said.