Escort services flourish at tourist spots

Bhanu P Lohumi

After online dating and sensual chatting on the Internet, websites are now promoting immoral trafficking on the pretext of offering escort services. Flesh trade is thriving in state, creating an erroneous impression that Himachal is going the Thailand way.

With tourism emerging as the biggest money-spinner and an employment-generation sector for the hill state, its negative fallout has surfaced in the form of drug addicts and flesh trade attracting the attention of the authorities.

An intensive search on the Internet made shocking revelations that there were more than 200 sites offering call girls and escort services for tourists and residents in the state. Most of the sites are operated through conduits. While some of these explicitly display the photographs of girls (mostly fake) with contact numbers, at the same time, they provide area-centric services.

The call-girl racket on the Internet is quite wide and has deep penetration, as it offers services of location-specific call girls, escort and adult services, which are available not only at tourist destinations like Shimla, Kasauli, McLeodganj, Kullu, Manali, Dharamsala, Mandi and Chamba, but also in small towns like Bilaspur, Darlaghat, Barmana and the industrial hubs at Nalagarh, Baddi, Barotiwala, Paonta Sahib and Kala Amb.

The Shimla police busted an online sex racket that was being run in the name of ‘Shimla escort service’ and arrested four persons, including two women, from Mashobra in the suburbs of the town on June 28.

Investigations revealed that such rackets were being operated from outside the state and the only mode of contact was the mobile numbers of the agents on the site.

Interestingly, sex-racket operators avoid responding to Himachal numbers and the police, which laid a trap, had to procure a Delhi number SIM to approach the agents. These agents used to supply girls in Shimla and the suburbs to tourists and high-profile clients, investigations pointed out.  

Investigations into cases of Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act revealed that most of the sex rackets are being operated from outside the state; girls from other states are offered to tourists and high-end customers in the state, said SP, Shimla, Umapati Jamwal. 

The agents enter into a nexus with the hotels doing poor business and act as middlemen between corporate and small groups and operate through online links and mobile phones. In fact, flesh trade is becoming a part of tourism and a section of tourists either brings call girls with them of procure them through local agents.

However, network links are also available on social networking sites mostly through fake accounts and the business is not restricted to girls only. One of the Facebook accounts with the name ‘Alka Himachal Call Girls Simla Escorts Service’ offers Rs 16,000-25,000 per night to gigolos to meet the demand of women customers. However, 90 to 95 per cent of these websites are fake.

The Kullu-Manali area has earned notoriety as a hub of cannabis and poppy cultivation, whose derivatives are used for extracting hashish and opium. There is no doubt that the “valley of Gods” attracts hordes of tourists, giving a boost to the tourism industry, but easy availability of drugs in the area is a major attraction for the younger generation and a section of foreigners. Drugs and prostitution go hand in hand but there has been no evidence of seizure of drugs with busting of a sex racket. However, liquor was found in almost all the cases.

Study by HPVHA

A study undertaken by the Himachal Pradesh Voluntary Health Association (HPVHA) in 2014 indicated that the Solan and Shimla districts, especially areas along the highways and industrial hubs, were emerging as centres for immoral trafficking of women and young girls who were into prostitution. The state Health Department had mapped the area in 2009 and the count of commercial sex workers was about 10,000.

Involvement of locals and changing trends

 The number of sex workers is greater in industrial towns of Nalagarh, Baddi, Barotiwala and Poanta Sahib. However, the flesh trade is flourishing in the main tourist towns of Shimla, Manali, Kullu and Dharamsala. The population of sex workers has also risen in the areas like Darlaghat and Barmana in Bilaspur district. 

A large number of females in the age group of 18 to 40, including married women, are taking to prostitution to be able to afford a better lifestyle and to buy new gadgets. “Weekend tourism is thriving on flesh trade,” says a retired police officer on condition of anonymity.  Earlier, there was a trend of tourists bringing women under the disguise of brides or as married couples, but now prostitution is becoming a business with a large number of hotels and resorts on the outskirts and in remote places doing “poor business” surviving and thriving by offering a safe haven for these illegal activities, he added.

A married woman from Uttar Pradesh settled in Shimla was running a sex racket from a guest house in the busy Ram Bazaar area in the heart of the city. Her modus operandi was to hire rooms in guest houses for illegal activities. The Shimla police busted the sex racket and arrested two persons and rescued one girl on June 2.

Apart from online portals, local networks offering services of girls are also doing brisk business in the state and most of these networks operate through mobile phones, says Sanjeev Sharma, who performed a sting operation in several areas of Kangra district over a period of three months recently. 

Besides women, minor girls were also involved and clients included businessman, industrialists, hoteliers and even government officials. Khans (porters), taxi drivers and ‘rehriwalas’ act as commission agents for these local networks, he added. Chairman of Umang Foundation Ajay Srivastav said “it is a very serious matter that such indecent content is available on online sites, the cyber crimes cell should play a pro-active role and take suo motu action against such websites.

Cases registered 

A total of 42 cases were registered against 151 persons, including 105 (males) and 46 (females) during the past five and a half years. The maximum number of cases were reported from Kullu (10) followed by Kangra (9) and Shimla (6), the known tourist destinations in the state. No case was registered in Hamirpur, Bilaspur, Chamba, Lahaul & Spiti and Kinnaur districts. 

Status of cases registered  

Out of 42 cases, 29 are being tried, eight cases are under investigation while in five cases a cancellation report has been submitted. 

Missing women & girls 

As many as 1,397 girls (below 18 years) and 7,431 women went missing in the past one decade out of which 1,325 girls and 6,841 women were traced which implies that 95 per cent of the missing girls were traced. The total number of missing persons, including men, boys, girls and women, was 14,385, out of which 12,798 have been traced while 1,586 are still untraced.

Case studies 

• December 25, 2017  

Sex racket busted in McLeodganj, 4 held 

Investigations revealed that the racket was being operated from Amritsar through a website handled by a kingpin who used to forward the number and the requirement of clients to pimps. The only link was through mobile phones and the girls lured in the racket were kept at Pathankot and Amritsar, so that the demand of the clients could be met readily.

• September 28, 2017 

2 held, two foreign nationals rescued

The police busted a sex racket in Manali and arrested two persons, including the manager of the hotel, a Tanzanian national, who acted as a pimp, for forcing two Ugandan women into the flesh trade.

• December 22, 2015 

Inter-state sex racket busted

Ten persons, including five women and the kingpin, in the age group of 19-23 years were arrested by the Shimla police. The police had laid a trap by calling at the numbers available on the online links of escort services as “decoy customers”. The racket run by Deepak Saini, alias Kunal, from Punjab supplied girls to the tourists in hotels. During the raid, five girls hailing from Uttaranchal, J&K, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Punjab were arrested along with three customers, two from Mumbai and one from Nepal.

• July 19, 2015 

Inter-state flesh trade racket busted, 31 held 

As many as 31 persons, including eight women (seven from Ludhiana), 20 men from Gangasagar in Rajasthan, and three “coordinators,” (including a woman) were arrested following a raid in a hotel in Shoghi (on the outskirts of Shimla). The modus operandi of the racket was to target small groups and corporate executives and tie up with small hotels on the outskirts of major towns. The girls were ostensibly brought on the pretext of providing entertainment by performing dances.