Singapore based sex trade busted
May 25 2010
Hyderabad, May 24: The state police have busted human trafficking and sex racket gang that would operate from Tamil Nadu and Singapore and arrested six persons.
A case against three Singapore-based racketeers has been registered and the police have decided to seek a red corner notice from Interpol.
The gang members who were arrested from Chennai, Hyderabad, Khammam and West and East Godavari were sending girls to Singapore on two-month tourist visas where they would be forced into prostitution.
The cops also rescued a 15-year-old girl of Tanuku in West Godavari district in an operation and registered a case against one of the gang members.
The accused has confessed that they have sent five girls to Singapore on the pretext of providing them with jobs. They were sent as relatives of the three accused gang members in Singapore.
During investigations, the Kovvur police identified 12 persons, P. Aruna Kumari (19) of Khammam, R. Santhi Kumari of East Godavari, A. Jagadish (31) of Vijayawada, Govinda Swamy Murugandanadam (28) of Chettiyar and Satyaveni, the wife of Murugan of Tamil Nadu, G. Krishna of Hyderabad and B. Purushottam Kumar of East Godavari, Rambabu of West Godavari and K. Satyanarayana of Rajahmundry.
A case has been booked against Maran, Kumar and Kannan of Singapore.
The Eluru Range DIG, Mr Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagawat, said, “Aruna Kumari used to send girls to Chennai with the help of the other accused. They promised the girls decent jobs in Singapore as maids.”
One of the accused, R. Santha Kumari, had gone to Singapore in 2008 on a tourist visa and returned to India and started sending women and girls to Chennai. Purushottam and Rambabu used to help organising passports and tourist visas for the girls. The Police caught the accused while they were trying to shift one of the victims to Singapore in a decoy operation. They said red corner notices & extradition proposals will be sent to ministry of external affairs and Embassy of India in Singapore.
Published on Deccan Chronicle
A team of West Godavari District Police led by DSP Kovvur Janaki Sharmila and others with the all support from Jebaraj of NGO Just Trust Chennai has been succesful in nabbing the Pondichery based Murugan who is on of the main trafficker. SP West Godavari Ravi Verma & DIG Eluru range has supervised this operation
Friday, May 28, 2010
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Pune-Andhra police raid Pune brothels, rescue 60 women
Andhra police raid Pune brothels, rescue 60 women
Reporter
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 AT 12:00 AM (IST)
Tags: Pune, human trafficking, prostitution, CID, raid
PUNE: The anti-human trafficking cell of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Andhra Pradesh conducted a raid on brothels in Budhwar Peth and rescued more than 60 girls including 20 minors on Monday. Police have arrested seven women on charges of forcing the rescued girls into prostitution.
The seven accused have been identified as Santhabai alias Sunitha Naik (55), Geetha alias Saraswathi alias Latha Venkataraman (40), Rekha Mentu Das (35), all hailing from Anantapur district of AP, Sheela Thapa (50), Laxmi Myla (35), Rita Naik (45) and Bharathi Rahul (37) all from Karnataka. Judicial Magistrate (First Class) B.B. Pantavne remanded the accused in transit custody of the AP police, to be produced before the CWC, Anantapur on or before May 14.
Deputy Superintendent of Police Shivaji T, of Andhra Pradesh CID said that a case was registered at the Kadiri town police station in 2008. Seven traffickers were arrested then and two girls rescued. During investigations, the rescued girls informed the police about more such victims being confined in brothels at Budhwar Peth in Pune. Accordingly, a search warrant was issued dated May 6 and with help of Faraskhana police, a raid was conducted on Monday in Sagar building, said DySP Shivaji.
High drama took place in the court when the rescued minor girls claimed to be major and residents of different states, in front of the court. DySP Shivaji T. had requested the court to grant their transit custody, but the defence counsel argued that these rescued and minor girls cannot be sent in transit remand with the police.
The court ordered the rescued girls to be sent in rescue homes at Nana Peth and Mundhva.
POSTPONED
The anti-human trafficking cell of the CID, Andhra Pradesh has conducted couple of successful raids in past few years. According to sources, the Monday raid, actually planned months before, had to be postponed after information was leaked at the local police station level.
Reporter
Wednesday, May 12, 2010 AT 12:00 AM (IST)
Tags: Pune, human trafficking, prostitution, CID, raid
PUNE: The anti-human trafficking cell of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of Andhra Pradesh conducted a raid on brothels in Budhwar Peth and rescued more than 60 girls including 20 minors on Monday. Police have arrested seven women on charges of forcing the rescued girls into prostitution.
The seven accused have been identified as Santhabai alias Sunitha Naik (55), Geetha alias Saraswathi alias Latha Venkataraman (40), Rekha Mentu Das (35), all hailing from Anantapur district of AP, Sheela Thapa (50), Laxmi Myla (35), Rita Naik (45) and Bharathi Rahul (37) all from Karnataka. Judicial Magistrate (First Class) B.B. Pantavne remanded the accused in transit custody of the AP police, to be produced before the CWC, Anantapur on or before May 14.
Deputy Superintendent of Police Shivaji T, of Andhra Pradesh CID said that a case was registered at the Kadiri town police station in 2008. Seven traffickers were arrested then and two girls rescued. During investigations, the rescued girls informed the police about more such victims being confined in brothels at Budhwar Peth in Pune. Accordingly, a search warrant was issued dated May 6 and with help of Faraskhana police, a raid was conducted on Monday in Sagar building, said DySP Shivaji.
High drama took place in the court when the rescued minor girls claimed to be major and residents of different states, in front of the court. DySP Shivaji T. had requested the court to grant their transit custody, but the defence counsel argued that these rescued and minor girls cannot be sent in transit remand with the police.
The court ordered the rescued girls to be sent in rescue homes at Nana Peth and Mundhva.
POSTPONED
The anti-human trafficking cell of the CID, Andhra Pradesh has conducted couple of successful raids in past few years. According to sources, the Monday raid, actually planned months before, had to be postponed after information was leaked at the local police station level.
Monday, May 10, 2010
Child traffickers held, kingpin still at large
New Delhi, May 10, 2010
Child traffickers held, kingpin still at large
A human trafficking network active throughout north India since last year was neutralised by the Delhi Police after four people – including a woman, were arrested from West Delhi on Sunday.
According to police, the gang would kidnap girls in the age group of five to eight years from Delhi and sell them in Rajasthan.
“These buyers would rear the children till they attained sexual maturity, before pushing them into prostitution and other illegal activities,” said Sharad Aggarwal DCP (west).
Police identified the accused as Bina, Mangal, Ashok and Shyam Lal – hailing from Alwar district of Rajasthan but are yet to apprehend Radha (name changed), the gang’s leader.
“Radha used to work as an assistant with contractors supplying food to various primary schools in the capital,” said a senior police officer.
Police said Radha would come in contact with families of the gang’s prospective victims and then use her acquaintance with them to get access to their children.
“She would then kidnap them and traffic them to Rajasthan,” said the officer.
Police said the gang’s modus operandi and its links to Radha were discovered while interrogating the four accused persons following raids at Alwar’s Sodavas and Girvas villages.
“During interrogation, Bina disclosed that she had purchased a five-year-old girl from Radha through Shyam Lal for Rs 45,000,” the officer said.
Another girl, around eight years, was recovered from Mangal who confessed purchasing her from the same woman for Rs 40,000, police said.
“In addition to these two, another girl child has been rescued. However, she is so young that she is yet to make any intelligible reference to her home address or to the identity of her parents,” said Aggarwal.
“We have sent the children to Nirmal Chhaya and registered a case,” Aggarwal added.
Child traffickers held, kingpin still at large
A human trafficking network active throughout north India since last year was neutralised by the Delhi Police after four people – including a woman, were arrested from West Delhi on Sunday.
According to police, the gang would kidnap girls in the age group of five to eight years from Delhi and sell them in Rajasthan.
“These buyers would rear the children till they attained sexual maturity, before pushing them into prostitution and other illegal activities,” said Sharad Aggarwal DCP (west).
Police identified the accused as Bina, Mangal, Ashok and Shyam Lal – hailing from Alwar district of Rajasthan but are yet to apprehend Radha (name changed), the gang’s leader.
“Radha used to work as an assistant with contractors supplying food to various primary schools in the capital,” said a senior police officer.
Police said Radha would come in contact with families of the gang’s prospective victims and then use her acquaintance with them to get access to their children.
“She would then kidnap them and traffic them to Rajasthan,” said the officer.
Police said the gang’s modus operandi and its links to Radha were discovered while interrogating the four accused persons following raids at Alwar’s Sodavas and Girvas villages.
“During interrogation, Bina disclosed that she had purchased a five-year-old girl from Radha through Shyam Lal for Rs 45,000,” the officer said.
Another girl, around eight years, was recovered from Mangal who confessed purchasing her from the same woman for Rs 40,000, police said.
“In addition to these two, another girl child has been rescued. However, she is so young that she is yet to make any intelligible reference to her home address or to the identity of her parents,” said Aggarwal.
“We have sent the children to Nirmal Chhaya and registered a case,” Aggarwal added.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
9 rapists sentenced to life
Deccan Chronicle
(http://www.deccanchronicle.com)
9 rapists sentenced to life
Apr 29 ,2010
April 28: A fast track court at Kothagudem has convicted 14 accused in a gang rape case where they shot the video on mobile phone and telecast it on the local cable TV network.
Nine of the accused have been sentenced for life imprisonment, one for 10 years, and four for five-year rigorous imprisonment. The Kothagudem Fast-Track Court Additional Sessions Judge, Ms Vijaya Lakshmi, passed the verdict on Monday.
In 2007, a minor girl was raped and blackmailed by circulating the obscene photographs of rape. The victim was threatened not to reveal though she had been sexually assaulted since February 17, 2007. However, she disclosed the crime only on January 5, 2009.
A case was registered with Kottagudem two-town police station of Khammam district against the 14 accused. The case was booked under the Information Technology Act apart from rape and other IPC sections. The accused are in the jail on remand since then.
The then Khammam superintendent of police and now Eluru DIG, Mr Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagawat, said, “the accused made a power point presentation of the rape photos and telecast them on the TV.”
The nine accused convicted for life have been identified as Amar, 24 , Raju, 28, Vamsi, 24, Raj Kamal, 19, Sudhakar, 26, Mahamood, 24, Muktyal, 46, Sultan, 23, and Baba, 21. The accused were convicted for gang-rape and under Section 66 of the IT Act. Another accused Md Ramjan, 22, was sentenced for 10 years for helping the rapists. Four other accused identified as P. Phani Kumar, 26, Nagaraju, 29, G. Madhu and K. Little Babu were sentenced for five years
(http://www.deccanchronicle.com)
9 rapists sentenced to life
Apr 29 ,2010
April 28: A fast track court at Kothagudem has convicted 14 accused in a gang rape case where they shot the video on mobile phone and telecast it on the local cable TV network.
Nine of the accused have been sentenced for life imprisonment, one for 10 years, and four for five-year rigorous imprisonment. The Kothagudem Fast-Track Court Additional Sessions Judge, Ms Vijaya Lakshmi, passed the verdict on Monday.
In 2007, a minor girl was raped and blackmailed by circulating the obscene photographs of rape. The victim was threatened not to reveal though she had been sexually assaulted since February 17, 2007. However, she disclosed the crime only on January 5, 2009.
A case was registered with Kottagudem two-town police station of Khammam district against the 14 accused. The case was booked under the Information Technology Act apart from rape and other IPC sections. The accused are in the jail on remand since then.
The then Khammam superintendent of police and now Eluru DIG, Mr Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagawat, said, “the accused made a power point presentation of the rape photos and telecast them on the TV.”
The nine accused convicted for life have been identified as Amar, 24 , Raju, 28, Vamsi, 24, Raj Kamal, 19, Sudhakar, 26, Mahamood, 24, Muktyal, 46, Sultan, 23, and Baba, 21. The accused were convicted for gang-rape and under Section 66 of the IT Act. Another accused Md Ramjan, 22, was sentenced for 10 years for helping the rapists. Four other accused identified as P. Phani Kumar, 26, Nagaraju, 29, G. Madhu and K. Little Babu were sentenced for five years
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Traffickers find loopholes to boost sex trade
Deccan Chronicle
Traffickers find loopholes to boost sex trade
28/03/2010
U.SUDHAKAR REDDY
With the cases of human trafficking increasing there is a need for greater Vigilance by the passport, emigration authorities, and by the police to nab traffickers and unscrupulous agents. With the cases of human trafficking increasing there is a need for greater vigilance by the passport, emigration authorities, and by the police to nab traffickers and unscrupulous agents. Thousands of girls and women who faked their age and were sent to work as house maids, beau ticians, hairdressers and baby sitters are now languishing in the sex trade in UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Singapore and Malayasia. There is little point in making rules and regulations to safeguard women from sexual exploitation when the rules are so easily and blatantly flouted. To check the racket in sex trafficking of women who seek to work overseas, the emigration rules say that no ‘Emigration Certificate Not Required’ stamp will be issued to unskilled or semiskilled women seeking to work abroad who are below 30 years of age. This rule was introduced because many girls and young women were being recruited for what they thought were genuine jobs overseas, and then pushed into the sex trade. However, unscrupulous recruiting agents have found a way around this age provision thanks to the laxity of the passport office and the emigration authorities and a flourishing trade in bogus age certificates. Two sisters from Mandapeta, one aged 18 and the other 21, were recently rescued from their employer in Dubai who was sexually exploiting them. Says the 18-year-old, who is now in the city: “Three of us from Mandapeta went to Deira in Dubai because we were promised a salary of Rs. 13,000 a month for domestic work. Each of us paid Rs. 60,000 to get a work permit. I was only 16 at the time, but in the affidavit the agent put my age as 30. From the very second day they began torturing us and exploited us sexually. We got in touch with one Raju, a native of Valigonda in Nalgonda district, a trader. He informed the Dubai police who rescued us and we landed in Hyderabad on March 2.”
The Mandapeta police have registered a case and arrested two persons including the local agent, Suleman. A police team that went to Chennai arrested others in the racket from Chennai and Vellore. Thousands of girls and women who faked their age and were sent to work as house maids, beauticians, hairdressers and baby sitters are now languishing either in the sex trade hubs in the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Singapore and Malayasia, or are exploited by their employers who pay them paltry sums as salary. It is the responsibility of the Regional Passport Office, which issues the passports, to check that the age is correct. Applicants whose educational qualification is below SSC (Class X) must get notarised affidavits as age proof. Here, another scam comes into play. While probing the recent case of a threat letter sent to the Chief Justice of the AP High Court, the Hyderabad police came across large numbers of blank notarised affidavits which were being used for illegal purposes, include providing proof of age for passport purposes. The Protector of Emigrants can issue an Emigration Check Not Required certificate if the woman’s age on her passport is above 30. But crooked job recruitment agents, some of whom are not even licensed, manage to get fraudulent affidavits certifying that the women are over 30 and no authority further down the line bothers to check whether the affidavit is genuine. These illegal agents work mostly in East Godavari, West Godavari, Kadapa, Anantapur, Nizamabad and Hyderabad districts.
The Eluru range deputy inspector-general of police, Mr. Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagawat, says, “The local agents have a network of agents in Bengaluru and Chennai who in turn have connections with agents in Dubai. Minor and unmarried women who trust them land up in brothels. Most of them are run by people from India, particularly Chennai, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh." Mr. Bhagawat said that the kingpin of the racket that involved the two sisters is Abdul Hameed of Kulai in Mangalore, Karnataka, who lives in Dubai. “He is assisted by people from Chennai, Bengaluru and one Bhanu from AP. At least seven of them are yet to be arrested in this case. The victims say there are 15 to 20 other girls from the state in Dubai being forced into the sex trade.” The state police have approached the joint secretary in the ministry of external affairs, Mr. Ravi Shankar Aisola, who in turn has contacted the consul general of India in the UAE to seek the arrest of the seven accused as well as to rescue the other girls. According to officials in the office of the Protector General of Emigrants, there are 87 registered and licensed recruiting agents in the state, most of them in Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Rayachoti, Kadapa, Nizamabad and Adilabad. At least one lakh people, including semi-skilled and unskilled men and women, were issued a work visa in 2009, up from 31,000 in 2008. Emigration officials say that it is up to the passport officials to cross-check the details of the affidavit giving proof of age, or to get an applicant medically tested if there is any doubt. Immigration authorities at airports are also not vigilant or else they would soon spot the obvious fraud. For those born after 1989, the only age of proof that is accepted by passport authorities is the municipal birth certificate or a certificate from the registrar of births. But for those born earlier, a certificate attesting to age from an educational institution or an affidavit sworn before a magistrate or notary stating date and place of birth is also accepted. Crooked agents use this latter provision by managing to get fake affidavits.
The police register cases under Section 24 of the Emigration Act and 420 of the IPC (cheating) against the bogus agents. In Kadapa, police booked around 35 such agents and in East Godavari two agents were arrested recently. The Regional Passport Officer was not available for comment for this article. Clearly, greater vigilance is required by the passport and emigration authorities, and by the police to nab traffickers and unscrupulous agents. A massive information campaign to warn poor women desperate for a job about the pitfalls ahead would also go a long way in preventing their exploitation.
Traffickers find loopholes to boost sex trade
28/03/2010
U.SUDHAKAR REDDY
DC HYDERABAD
With the cases of human trafficking increasing there is a need for greater Vigilance by the passport, emigration authorities, and by the police to nab traffickers and unscrupulous agents. With the cases of human trafficking increasing there is a need for greater vigilance by the passport, emigration authorities, and by the police to nab traffickers and unscrupulous agents. Thousands of girls and women who faked their age and were sent to work as house maids, beau ticians, hairdressers and baby sitters are now languishing in the sex trade in UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Singapore and Malayasia. There is little point in making rules and regulations to safeguard women from sexual exploitation when the rules are so easily and blatantly flouted. To check the racket in sex trafficking of women who seek to work overseas, the emigration rules say that no ‘Emigration Certificate Not Required’ stamp will be issued to unskilled or semiskilled women seeking to work abroad who are below 30 years of age. This rule was introduced because many girls and young women were being recruited for what they thought were genuine jobs overseas, and then pushed into the sex trade. However, unscrupulous recruiting agents have found a way around this age provision thanks to the laxity of the passport office and the emigration authorities and a flourishing trade in bogus age certificates. Two sisters from Mandapeta, one aged 18 and the other 21, were recently rescued from their employer in Dubai who was sexually exploiting them. Says the 18-year-old, who is now in the city: “Three of us from Mandapeta went to Deira in Dubai because we were promised a salary of Rs. 13,000 a month for domestic work. Each of us paid Rs. 60,000 to get a work permit. I was only 16 at the time, but in the affidavit the agent put my age as 30. From the very second day they began torturing us and exploited us sexually. We got in touch with one Raju, a native of Valigonda in Nalgonda district, a trader. He informed the Dubai police who rescued us and we landed in Hyderabad on March 2.” The Mandapeta police have registered a case and arrested two persons including the local agent, Suleman. A police team that went to Chennai arrested others in the racket from Chennai and Vellore. Thousands of girls and women who faked their age and were sent to work as house maids, beauticians, hairdressers and baby sitters are now languishing either in the sex trade hubs in the UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Singapore and Malayasia, or are exploited by their employers who pay them paltry sums as salary. It is the responsibility of the Regional Passport Office, which issues the passports, to check that the age is correct. Applicants whose educational qualification is below SSC (Class X) must get notarised affidavits as age proof. Here, another scam comes into play. While probing the recent case of a threat letter sent to the Chief Justice of the AP High Court, the Hyderabad police came across large numbers of blank notarised affidavits which were being used for illegal purposes, include providing proof of age for passport purposes. The Protector of Emigrants can issue an Emigration Check Not Required certificate if the woman’s age on her passport is above 30. But crooked job recruitment agents, some of whom are not even licensed, manage to get fraudulent affidavits certifying that the women are over 30 and no authority further down the line bothers to check whether the affidavit is genuine. These illegal agents work mostly in East Godavari, West Godavari, Kadapa, Anantapur, Nizamabad and Hyderabad districts.
The Eluru range deputy inspector-general of police, Mr. Mahesh Muralidhar Bhagawat, says, “The local agents have a network of agents in Bengaluru and Chennai who in turn have connections with agents in Dubai. Minor and unmarried women who trust them land up in brothels. Most of them are run by people from India, particularly Chennai, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh." Mr. Bhagawat said that the kingpin of the racket that involved the two sisters is Abdul Hameed of Kulai in Mangalore, Karnataka, who lives in Dubai. “He is assisted by people from Chennai, Bengaluru and one Bhanu from AP. At least seven of them are yet to be arrested in this case. The victims say there are 15 to 20 other girls from the state in Dubai being forced into the sex trade.” The state police have approached the joint secretary in the ministry of external affairs, Mr. Ravi Shankar Aisola, who in turn has contacted the consul general of India in the UAE to seek the arrest of the seven accused as well as to rescue the other girls. According to officials in the office of the Protector General of Emigrants, there are 87 registered and licensed recruiting agents in the state, most of them in Hyderabad, Secunderabad, Rayachoti, Kadapa, Nizamabad and Adilabad. At least one lakh people, including semi-skilled and unskilled men and women, were issued a work visa in 2009, up from 31,000 in 2008. Emigration officials say that it is up to the passport officials to cross-check the details of the affidavit giving proof of age, or to get an applicant medically tested if there is any doubt. Immigration authorities at airports are also not vigilant or else they would soon spot the obvious fraud. For those born after 1989, the only age of proof that is accepted by passport authorities is the municipal birth certificate or a certificate from the registrar of births. But for those born earlier, a certificate attesting to age from an educational institution or an affidavit sworn before a magistrate or notary stating date and place of birth is also accepted. Crooked agents use this latter provision by managing to get fake affidavits.
The police register cases under Section 24 of the Emigration Act and 420 of the IPC (cheating) against the bogus agents. In Kadapa, police booked around 35 such agents and in East Godavari two agents were arrested recently. The Regional Passport Officer was not available for comment for this article. Clearly, greater vigilance is required by the passport and emigration authorities, and by the police to nab traffickers and unscrupulous agents. A massive information campaign to warn poor women desperate for a job about the pitfalls ahead would also go a long way in preventing their exploitation.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
THE HINDU
Andhra Pradesh - Rajahmundry
Girl trafficking on the rise in coastal Andhra
Date:03/03/2010
‘Sravanti’ gather information about 246 slum children in Rajahmundry
Sravanti is an NGO working on child rights and related issues
HIV positive cases have also increased
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rajahmundry: Girl trafficking in coastal Andhra, particularly East and West Godavari districts, has been on the rise for the last two years and most of the girls are minors.
According to Sravanti, an NGO working on child rights and child abuse and related matters, which released a report on Tuesday, the prevalence rate of HIV has also increased among the children in East Godavari. The rise in HIV positive cases is 2 per cent in the age group of 9-18 years.
Speaking to media persons after conducting ‘awareness creation for media persons about child rights and formation of network’, G. Saikumar and A. Ramakrishna, project coordinator and secretary respectively, said that the organisation took up social mapping in 30 slums of Rajahmundry. In the exercise, the organisation identified different issues including early child marriages, HIV, child labour, child trafficking, orphans, semi-orphans, drop-out children, migration and neglected child.
Mr. Saikumar said that the NGO gathered information about 246 children from 30 slums, among whose 46 were HIV-affected. He said that most of the school drop-outs in Chenchukona hamlet of Konthamuru panchayat were staying in the school till 11 a.m. and after mid-day meal they were coming out for begging, going for labour work in quarry area and rest of the children were in the grip of the gangs involved in girl-trafficking.
According to Mr. Ramakrishna, “Most of the minor girls that are released from prostitute houses from Mumbai, Bangalore, Goa and other areas are from East and West Godavari districts.” He said that four blocks in Satellite City, Bruhannalapeta, Seethampeta, Annapoornammapeta were identified as the areas where girl trafficking was prevalent. Child labourers were more in Namavaram, Lingampeta, Ambedkarnagar and Andhra Nagar areas, he said.
Andhra Pradesh - Rajahmundry
Girl trafficking on the rise in coastal Andhra
Date:03/03/2010
‘Sravanti’ gather information about 246 slum children in Rajahmundry
Sravanti is an NGO working on child rights and related issues
HIV positive cases have also increased
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rajahmundry: Girl trafficking in coastal Andhra, particularly East and West Godavari districts, has been on the rise for the last two years and most of the girls are minors.
According to Sravanti, an NGO working on child rights and child abuse and related matters, which released a report on Tuesday, the prevalence rate of HIV has also increased among the children in East Godavari. The rise in HIV positive cases is 2 per cent in the age group of 9-18 years.
Speaking to media persons after conducting ‘awareness creation for media persons about child rights and formation of network’, G. Saikumar and A. Ramakrishna, project coordinator and secretary respectively, said that the organisation took up social mapping in 30 slums of Rajahmundry. In the exercise, the organisation identified different issues including early child marriages, HIV, child labour, child trafficking, orphans, semi-orphans, drop-out children, migration and neglected child.
Mr. Saikumar said that the NGO gathered information about 246 children from 30 slums, among whose 46 were HIV-affected. He said that most of the school drop-outs in Chenchukona hamlet of Konthamuru panchayat were staying in the school till 11 a.m. and after mid-day meal they were coming out for begging, going for labour work in quarry area and rest of the children were in the grip of the gangs involved in girl-trafficking.
According to Mr. Ramakrishna, “Most of the minor girls that are released from prostitute houses from Mumbai, Bangalore, Goa and other areas are from East and West Godavari districts.” He said that four blocks in Satellite City, Bruhannalapeta, Seethampeta, Annapoornammapeta were identified as the areas where girl trafficking was prevalent. Child labourers were more in Namavaram, Lingampeta, Ambedkarnagar and Andhra Nagar areas, he said.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
New Delhi based Godman, air hostesses held for running sex racket
New Delhi based Godman, air hostesses held for running sex racket
A self-styled godman who preached spirituality while running a prostitution racket and two air hostesses were among eight people arrested for flesh trade here, police said Friday.
The eight, including two men and six women in the age group of 19 to 30 years, were taken into custody near the PVR cinema at Saket in south Delhi Thursday while travelling in two cars.
They included an air hostess who worked for an Indian carrier and another who was employed by a European airline.
The mastermind was identified as Shiv Murat Dwivedi, 39, alias Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale.
Deputy Commissioner of Police HGS Dhaliwal said that Dwivedi belonged to Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh. He came to New Delhi in 1988 and worked as a security guard at a five-star hotel in Nehru Place.
He later worked for a massage parlour at Lajpat Nagar. He was arrested for carrying out prostitution 1997 and 1998, Dhaliwal said.
“Dwivedi then changed his appearance and started calling himself Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale. He was based at a Sai Baba temple in Badarpur and gradually started a flourishing flesh trade racket in the guise of leading a spiritual life,” he said.
Dwivedi started holding religious discourses and congregations and even got a video CD titled “Shri Sai Amrit Varsha” released. He even wrote for a magazine.
He constructed a 200-bed hospital and a huge temple in Chitrakoot.
Dhaliwal said the two air hostesses lived in posh areas of South Delhi. “One is pursuing MBA. The other is an aspiring model who wants to debut in Bollywood.”
A self-styled godman who preached spirituality while running a prostitution racket and two air hostesses were among eight people arrested for flesh trade here, police said Friday.
The eight, including two men and six women in the age group of 19 to 30 years, were taken into custody near the PVR cinema at Saket in south Delhi Thursday while travelling in two cars.
They included an air hostess who worked for an Indian carrier and another who was employed by a European airline.
The mastermind was identified as Shiv Murat Dwivedi, 39, alias Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale.
Deputy Commissioner of Police HGS Dhaliwal said that Dwivedi belonged to Chitrakoot in Uttar Pradesh. He came to New Delhi in 1988 and worked as a security guard at a five-star hotel in Nehru Place.
He later worked for a massage parlour at Lajpat Nagar. He was arrested for carrying out prostitution 1997 and 1998, Dhaliwal said.
“Dwivedi then changed his appearance and started calling himself Ichchadhari Sant Swami Bhimanand Ji Maharaj Chitrakoot Wale. He was based at a Sai Baba temple in Badarpur and gradually started a flourishing flesh trade racket in the guise of leading a spiritual life,” he said.
Dwivedi started holding religious discourses and congregations and even got a video CD titled “Shri Sai Amrit Varsha” released. He even wrote for a magazine.
He constructed a 200-bed hospital and a huge temple in Chitrakoot.
Dhaliwal said the two air hostesses lived in posh areas of South Delhi. “One is pursuing MBA. The other is an aspiring model who wants to debut in Bollywood.”
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Inter-state trafficking gang held, 10 women rescued
Inter-state trafficking gang held, 10 women rescued
Fri, Feb 26 09:20 PM
Hyderabad, Feb 26 (PTI) Police today claimed to have busted an inter-state trafficking racket with the arrest of 12 persons and rescued 10 women, including three minors, who were forced into prostitution in Andhra Pradesh''s West Godavari district. Acting on a tip-off, a police team conducted a raid on the house of S Rajeswari, a resident of Tadepalligudem town in the district yesterday and rescued the girls, Eluru Range DIG Mahesh M Bhagwat said.
When the raid was made, the woman along with 11 other persons were negotiating a deal for buying and recruiting the girls for flesh trade, he said. "While the negotiations were coming to an end, the police party surrounded the house and caught the traffickers'' gang red-handed," Bhagwat said.
During interrogation the accused revealed that they used to trap poor girls by promising them jobs in Chennai, he said, adding that the gang used to sell the victims at the rate of Rs 30,000 each. The girls were sent to medical examination and the accused were being sent to judicial remand after being booked under various sections of IPC, the DIG said.
Fri, Feb 26 09:20 PM
Hyderabad, Feb 26 (PTI) Police today claimed to have busted an inter-state trafficking racket with the arrest of 12 persons and rescued 10 women, including three minors, who were forced into prostitution in Andhra Pradesh''s West Godavari district. Acting on a tip-off, a police team conducted a raid on the house of S Rajeswari, a resident of Tadepalligudem town in the district yesterday and rescued the girls, Eluru Range DIG Mahesh M Bhagwat said.
When the raid was made, the woman along with 11 other persons were negotiating a deal for buying and recruiting the girls for flesh trade, he said. "While the negotiations were coming to an end, the police party surrounded the house and caught the traffickers'' gang red-handed," Bhagwat said.
During interrogation the accused revealed that they used to trap poor girls by promising them jobs in Chennai, he said, adding that the gang used to sell the victims at the rate of Rs 30,000 each. The girls were sent to medical examination and the accused were being sent to judicial remand after being booked under various sections of IPC, the DIG said.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Sensitization of stake holders on human trafficking at Eluru
Staff Reporter
ELURU: Sunita Krishnan, founder of ‘Prajvala’, a Hyderabad-based non-governmental organisation working for the victims of women trafficking, on Tuesday expressed her concern over the State turning into a hub of sex tourism of late. She was speaking at a sensitisation programme on human trafficking here. In a bid to drive her point home, she said the recent raids by the police in Hyderabad had revealed that the tourists from Azerbaijan, Serbia and Uzbekistan had been descending on the State for their sexual exploits with children aged below 10 years.
A decoy operation conducted by her organisation in Hyderabad had led to the rescue of a 12-year-old high school girl from the sex work. Alarmingly, even the children in 3-4 years age group were being used for shooting of pornographic films to be sold in the European market, Ms. Sunita said.
She regretted that the Internet turned out to be a convenient market channel for sex tourists.
The activist said the increasing consumerism allegedly abetted by the media through advertisements had been forcing the women into the trafficking regardless of their economic and social status.
The societal attitude towards the victims of trafficking made it difficult for their re-integration with the mainstream society after their liberation from the traffickers, she added.
Mahesh M. Bhagavat, DIG of Police, Eluru range, appealed to the district administration to sanction a bridge school for the children of trafficking victims in the district. He regretted over the reported passive role of the Revenue Divisional Magistrates (also RDOs) in exercising their powers under the Section 18(1) of the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act, 1986 in closing brothels and eviction of traffickers. Superintendent of Police B. Balakrishna and Collector A. Vani Prasad spoke
10 years conviction for traffickers in A.P.
In a human trafficking case of procuring minor girl for prostitution with a plan to send her to Malaysia-Singapore reported in 2007 at Eluru 2 Town P.S. of West Godavari District in A.P., on 5/2/2010, 2 traffickers are convicted for 10 years rigorous imprisonment under section 5 of Immoral Traffic Prevention act 1986, 7 years of rigorous imprisonment under 366A IPC. and 6 months of imprisonment under 417 IPC. One of the trafficker had earlier worked in Singapore- Malaysia & her passport was seized. Victim was trapped in the name of giving her admission in Nursing School at Chennai & her Passport was under prepration when raid was conducted.
Investigating officers Sub Inspector Govind Raju & Inspector Vijay Paul underwent training at AP Police academy for human trafficking under UNODC's project. Dedicated efforts of sensitized Police officers, prosecutor & Judicial Magistrate helped in getting this note worthy conviction. Anti Human trafficking Unit for Andhra region is located at Eluru
Investigating officers Sub Inspector Govind Raju & Inspector Vijay Paul underwent training at AP Police academy for human trafficking under UNODC's project. Dedicated efforts of sensitized Police officers, prosecutor & Judicial Magistrate helped in getting this note worthy conviction. Anti Human trafficking Unit for Andhra region is located at Eluru
Saturday, February 13, 2010
Compendium on Best Practices: Anti Human Trafficking by Law Enforcement Agencies
Brothel owner held at Samalkot
Brothel owner held at Samalkot
By By DC Correspondent
Feb 13 2010
Feb. 12: Two minor girls of the city escaped from a brothel at Samalkot on Friday.With the help of an auto-rickshaw driver, the girls reached Samalkot police station. The police took the brothel’s organiser into custody.
According to the girls aged around 14 years, a few days ago, a woman Devi from Kattipudi in East Godavari approached the girls’ parents, residents of Kakinada II Town.
Devi asked the parents to send the girls along with her and promised them that she would show some work to the girls somewhere in the district. The parents agreed and sent the girls with Devi who sold the girls to the brothel organiser, Vemagiri Missamma, who is living in a Rajiv Gruhakalpa house at Samalkot.
For the last six days, Missamma started pestering the girls to join her work with a person in Hyderabad. The girls refused to do so.
On Friday morning, the girls escaped from the house and met an auto-rickshaw driver, G Veeranna. With his help, the girls met the district Congress secretary, Mr U. John Moses, who took them to the police station.
Police immediately raided the house and took two women, P. Lakshmi and Devi into custody initially and launched an investigation.
Speaking to reporters, the girls said that Missamma was planning to send them to Chennai and Hyderabad for sex work.
By By DC Correspondent
Feb 13 2010
Feb. 12: Two minor girls of the city escaped from a brothel at Samalkot on Friday.With the help of an auto-rickshaw driver, the girls reached Samalkot police station. The police took the brothel’s organiser into custody.
According to the girls aged around 14 years, a few days ago, a woman Devi from Kattipudi in East Godavari approached the girls’ parents, residents of Kakinada II Town.
Devi asked the parents to send the girls along with her and promised them that she would show some work to the girls somewhere in the district. The parents agreed and sent the girls with Devi who sold the girls to the brothel organiser, Vemagiri Missamma, who is living in a Rajiv Gruhakalpa house at Samalkot.
For the last six days, Missamma started pestering the girls to join her work with a person in Hyderabad. The girls refused to do so.
On Friday morning, the girls escaped from the house and met an auto-rickshaw driver, G Veeranna. With his help, the girls met the district Congress secretary, Mr U. John Moses, who took them to the police station.
Police immediately raided the house and took two women, P. Lakshmi and Devi into custody initially and launched an investigation.
Speaking to reporters, the girls said that Missamma was planning to send them to Chennai and Hyderabad for sex work.
Wednesday, February 10, 2010
15 minor girls brought for factory work freed
15 minor girls brought for factory work freed
TNN, 10 February 2010,
BANGALORE: Fifteen minor girls from Andhra Pradesh who were brought to Bangalore to work in a garment factory at Nayandanahalli, were rescued at the City Railway Station on Tuesday.
Railway authorities, who saw the group of anxious girls from Srikakulam district in AP, alerted the police and child helpline. Preliminary inquiry revealed they were bought and then brought for work.
BOSCO child helpline coordinator Gnana Prakash said: “Off the 15 girls, three are above 18 years and were working at a garment factory. They were paid by the employer to get more girls. So they brought the minors from their hometown Srikakulam. Such incidents are regular in garment factories but are left unchecked by the authorities.”
A security personnel from the garment factory was waiting at the railway station with a vehicle to take these girls to the factory. However, timely action from the railway authorities saved them.
The girls are at the government girls home now. The child helpline has registered a case of trafficking with the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights
TNN, 10 February 2010,
BANGALORE: Fifteen minor girls from Andhra Pradesh who were brought to Bangalore to work in a garment factory at Nayandanahalli, were rescued at the City Railway Station on Tuesday.
Railway authorities, who saw the group of anxious girls from Srikakulam district in AP, alerted the police and child helpline. Preliminary inquiry revealed they were bought and then brought for work.
BOSCO child helpline coordinator Gnana Prakash said: “Off the 15 girls, three are above 18 years and were working at a garment factory. They were paid by the employer to get more girls. So they brought the minors from their hometown Srikakulam. Such incidents are regular in garment factories but are left unchecked by the authorities.”
A security personnel from the garment factory was waiting at the railway station with a vehicle to take these girls to the factory. However, timely action from the railway authorities saved them.
The girls are at the government girls home now. The child helpline has registered a case of trafficking with the State Commission for Protection of Child Rights
Thursday, February 04, 2010
Indian gov't plans code of conduct for ‘safe’ tourism
Indian gov't plans code of conduct for ‘safe’ tourism
Ranjeet S. Jamwal
The Statesman
Publication Date: 04-02-2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In view of the increasing incidences of rape, sexual offences, sexual abuse of children, particularly street-children, the Indian tourism ministry has finalised a 'code of conduct' for the industry to prevent any form of exploitation of children.
Apart from preventing sexual exploitation of children and women, the 'code of conduct for safe and honourable tourism' also aims to protect India’s culture, values and heritage.
As 70 per cent of sex workers in the country are children, the code has specific guidelines for hotels, tour operators and airlines for preventing sexual exploitation of children by guests.
It has been finalised after consulting all stakeholders in the tourism sector, including state governments. According to sources in the tourism ministry, the code of conduct will be implemented once it gets the approval of the tourism minister Miss Selja. The most likely date for its implementation is March 8 (International Women’s Day).
When the code of conduct comes into effect, suppliers of tourism services will have to take measures to protect children against sexual exploitation in the business. As per the code of conduct, hotels, tour operators and airlines will have to train their staff to identify and report a possible exploitative activity to authorities. It also forbids tourists from seeking out children for sex via chat rooms and discussion groups. Hotels would also be asked not to ‘help’ tourists get access to children for sex or employ minors in their industry.
Child sex tourism is believed to be prevalent in many states of the country. Studies have shown that in the name of pilgrim, heritage and coastal tourism, sexual exploitation of children is quite widespread in Maharastra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Orissa.
Apart from major cities and places for sightseeing, pilgrim centres like Tirupati, Guruvayoor and Puri are growing hubs for sex tourism. Study reports say foreign tourists engage in paedophilia and sex with minors through short-term marriages.
Last month, the Supreme Court had asked the government to come out with foolproof measures to curb ‘sex tourism’ in the country and register cases of rape against those pushing children into prostitution rackets or having sex with them. It directed that sexual assault on children must be registered as rape.
Ranjeet S. Jamwal
The Statesman
Publication Date: 04-02-2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In view of the increasing incidences of rape, sexual offences, sexual abuse of children, particularly street-children, the Indian tourism ministry has finalised a 'code of conduct' for the industry to prevent any form of exploitation of children.
Apart from preventing sexual exploitation of children and women, the 'code of conduct for safe and honourable tourism' also aims to protect India’s culture, values and heritage.
As 70 per cent of sex workers in the country are children, the code has specific guidelines for hotels, tour operators and airlines for preventing sexual exploitation of children by guests.
It has been finalised after consulting all stakeholders in the tourism sector, including state governments. According to sources in the tourism ministry, the code of conduct will be implemented once it gets the approval of the tourism minister Miss Selja. The most likely date for its implementation is March 8 (International Women’s Day).
When the code of conduct comes into effect, suppliers of tourism services will have to take measures to protect children against sexual exploitation in the business. As per the code of conduct, hotels, tour operators and airlines will have to train their staff to identify and report a possible exploitative activity to authorities. It also forbids tourists from seeking out children for sex via chat rooms and discussion groups. Hotels would also be asked not to ‘help’ tourists get access to children for sex or employ minors in their industry.
Child sex tourism is believed to be prevalent in many states of the country. Studies have shown that in the name of pilgrim, heritage and coastal tourism, sexual exploitation of children is quite widespread in Maharastra, Goa, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal and Orissa.
Apart from major cities and places for sightseeing, pilgrim centres like Tirupati, Guruvayoor and Puri are growing hubs for sex tourism. Study reports say foreign tourists engage in paedophilia and sex with minors through short-term marriages.
Last month, the Supreme Court had asked the government to come out with foolproof measures to curb ‘sex tourism’ in the country and register cases of rape against those pushing children into prostitution rackets or having sex with them. It directed that sexual assault on children must be registered as rape.
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
Centre’s code push to wipe off child sex tourism stain
Centre’s code push to wipe off child sex tourism stain
New Delhi, Feb 2, DHNS:
Deeply disturbed and concerned with the widely growing perception that India is emerging as a prime sex tourism destination, the Centre has taken the first big step towards checking an anomaly by putting together a code of conduct for the tourism industry.
What has made the government and the tourism industry sit up and take note of a trend in which foreign tourists visit tourism hubs like Goa, Kerala as well as pilgrimage-rich stateslike Tamil Nadu and Orissa to seek more than the sun and the culture.
The code of conduct is a virtual admission by the government that the problem exists. The code of conduct, which is likely to become effective on March 8 – observed as International Women’s Day – after approval from Tourism Minister Kumari Selja, has come following several recent exposes involving foreigners indulging in child sex, paedophilia and pornography.
The code of conduct for service providers in the tourism sector for “Safe and Honorable Tourism” has been finalised after consulting all stakeholders, including state governments.
“It had become an urgent necessity to come up with such a code as India has been identified as a source, transit and destination point in the international circuit, and a large number of children are also trafficked within the country,” the sources stressed.
Tourism Ministry sources said the government decided to act following warnings from experts that the menace had assumed dangerous proportions not just in tourist havens but also in pligrimage centres in Tamil Nadu and Orissa.
Humane view
The government is also taking a humane view and would not want condemning impoverished children to the explotation of sex tourism. “The code aims to protect children and women, culture, values and the coutnry’s heritage to ensure long-term sustainable and responsible tourism in India,” the sources said.
Among the organisations involved in evolving the code are PATA India, Save the Children India, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Equitable Tourism Option (EQUATIONS), NEST India Foundation and the National Commission for Women was also consulted in this regard.
”Under the code, hotels will have to report any suspicious behaviour by any staff or customer to the local police. If any material pertaining to child pornography is found on the computer of any employee or customer, it will also have to be reported to the local police,” the sources said.
Tour operators will have to train personnel to be alert against any possibility of sexual exploitation of children.
“Airlines operating within and to India will have to commit themselves to pursue, with every possible means, public awareness about the issue through in-flight magazines, ticket jackets, internet links, and videos on long-haul flights,” the sources said.
The code will be applicable to all directors, employees, suppliers, contractors and patrons of hotels, airlines, tour operators and institutions connected with the industry. It will require hotels to even prevent guests from visiting child pornography sites using the Internet, and seeking to contact children for sexual purposes via chat rooms or discussion groups.
The code has been necessitated, the sources said, in the light of growth in high-spending foreign tourists and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC)’s projection that India will be among the nations having the fastest-growing tourism industry over the next 10-15 years.
The government move follows the 2008 World Congress against the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents held in Rio, Brazil, in which countries were asked to draft special laws to prevent children from being used in the tourism industry.
New Delhi, Feb 2, DHNS:
Deeply disturbed and concerned with the widely growing perception that India is emerging as a prime sex tourism destination, the Centre has taken the first big step towards checking an anomaly by putting together a code of conduct for the tourism industry.
What has made the government and the tourism industry sit up and take note of a trend in which foreign tourists visit tourism hubs like Goa, Kerala as well as pilgrimage-rich stateslike Tamil Nadu and Orissa to seek more than the sun and the culture.
The code of conduct is a virtual admission by the government that the problem exists. The code of conduct, which is likely to become effective on March 8 – observed as International Women’s Day – after approval from Tourism Minister Kumari Selja, has come following several recent exposes involving foreigners indulging in child sex, paedophilia and pornography.
The code of conduct for service providers in the tourism sector for “Safe and Honorable Tourism” has been finalised after consulting all stakeholders, including state governments.
“It had become an urgent necessity to come up with such a code as India has been identified as a source, transit and destination point in the international circuit, and a large number of children are also trafficked within the country,” the sources stressed.
Tourism Ministry sources said the government decided to act following warnings from experts that the menace had assumed dangerous proportions not just in tourist havens but also in pligrimage centres in Tamil Nadu and Orissa.
Humane view
The government is also taking a humane view and would not want condemning impoverished children to the explotation of sex tourism. “The code aims to protect children and women, culture, values and the coutnry’s heritage to ensure long-term sustainable and responsible tourism in India,” the sources said.
Among the organisations involved in evolving the code are PATA India, Save the Children India, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Equitable Tourism Option (EQUATIONS), NEST India Foundation and the National Commission for Women was also consulted in this regard.
”Under the code, hotels will have to report any suspicious behaviour by any staff or customer to the local police. If any material pertaining to child pornography is found on the computer of any employee or customer, it will also have to be reported to the local police,” the sources said.
Tour operators will have to train personnel to be alert against any possibility of sexual exploitation of children.
“Airlines operating within and to India will have to commit themselves to pursue, with every possible means, public awareness about the issue through in-flight magazines, ticket jackets, internet links, and videos on long-haul flights,” the sources said.
The code will be applicable to all directors, employees, suppliers, contractors and patrons of hotels, airlines, tour operators and institutions connected with the industry. It will require hotels to even prevent guests from visiting child pornography sites using the Internet, and seeking to contact children for sexual purposes via chat rooms or discussion groups.
The code has been necessitated, the sources said, in the light of growth in high-spending foreign tourists and the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC)’s projection that India will be among the nations having the fastest-growing tourism industry over the next 10-15 years.
The government move follows the 2008 World Congress against the sexual exploitation of children and adolescents held in Rio, Brazil, in which countries were asked to draft special laws to prevent children from being used in the tourism industry.
Police bust gang trafficking in girls
THE HINDU
Date:03/02/2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andhra Pradesh - Rajahmundry
Police bust gang trafficking in girls
Staff Reporter
Minor shifted to hospital for tests
Rajahmundry: Police cracked two important cases on Tuesday at a time. In once case, they arrested members of a gang involved in trafficking of girls. In another case they arrested two persons who were allegedly taking 75 packets of ganja along with them in a car. The two cases were dealt with by D. Janaki, Sub-Divisional Police Officer and her team.
In a media conference, the DSP said that Boddeti Seetha Mahalakshmi and her brother Boddeti Ganesh were engaged in tailoring in Narayanapuram area from 2007. They kidnapped a minor girl and Ganesh allegedly molested her and then sold the girl with the help of his sister to Nani-Raju brother gang in Hyderabad. In 2008, Malakpeta police raided the brothel and sent back the minor girl to Swadhara Home in Rajahmundry. Recently, the girl went back to her grandmother’s house and Seetha Mahalakshmi and Ganesh chased her and tried to engage her in prostitution. However, she escaped from their clutches and reached One-Town police station.
Sub-Inspector M.G. Ramakrishna took her to DSP and the DSP and SI raided the house of Seetha Mahalakshmi and Ganesh on Tuesday morning and arrested them. The minor girl was shifted to Government Hospital for medical tests. The police booked cases under different sections under IPC and POA Acts.
Date:03/02/2010
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andhra Pradesh - Rajahmundry
Police bust gang trafficking in girls
Staff Reporter
Minor shifted to hospital for tests
Rajahmundry: Police cracked two important cases on Tuesday at a time. In once case, they arrested members of a gang involved in trafficking of girls. In another case they arrested two persons who were allegedly taking 75 packets of ganja along with them in a car. The two cases were dealt with by D. Janaki, Sub-Divisional Police Officer and her team.
In a media conference, the DSP said that Boddeti Seetha Mahalakshmi and her brother Boddeti Ganesh were engaged in tailoring in Narayanapuram area from 2007. They kidnapped a minor girl and Ganesh allegedly molested her and then sold the girl with the help of his sister to Nani-Raju brother gang in Hyderabad. In 2008, Malakpeta police raided the brothel and sent back the minor girl to Swadhara Home in Rajahmundry. Recently, the girl went back to her grandmother’s house and Seetha Mahalakshmi and Ganesh chased her and tried to engage her in prostitution. However, she escaped from their clutches and reached One-Town police station.
Sub-Inspector M.G. Ramakrishna took her to DSP and the DSP and SI raided the house of Seetha Mahalakshmi and Ganesh on Tuesday morning and arrested them. The minor girl was shifted to Government Hospital for medical tests. The police booked cases under different sections under IPC and POA Acts.
Monday, February 01, 2010
International trafficking India as destination
The new white flesh trade
Mihir Srivastava
January 21, 2010
Lola, 22, is a tall girl with high, thin eyebrows on a slender face. Her features are sharp but her eyes are uninterested, fixed at a painting on the wall of the coffee shop, as she tries hard to explain, in broken English, why she is in India. Clad in a too-tight pink sweatshirt, faded cream shorts and shiny red boots, her right hand bearing a cocktail ring which she keeps twisting nervously, her blue nail varnish chipped, she seems a far cry from her alluring nocturnal avatar as one of the Capital's high-priced prostitutes. She speaks of how she came to work here two-and-a-half months ago. Her boyfriend TC, not Tom Cruise, she clarifies, momentarily showing signs of life, joined her last month. Both are clear about what they want from their lives--enough money to buy a house in Tashkent, their hometown in Uzbekistan.
The cost of fantasy
CIS girls now dominate the high-end sex market offering sexual pleasure as leisure
SERVICES TIME IN HOURS RATE IN RUPEES/per head
One trip (sexual intercourse) Two 8,000
Two trips Two 10,000
Two trips Four 15,000
Unlimited trips Eight or overnight 25,000
Orgy (at least one girl per person) Eight or overnight 25,000
Escort service (travel outstation with the client, all expenses are met) Per day 25,000
Play hostess at a stag party Four hours 15,000
Posing as nude model for photography and sketching One hour 5,000
Payment is in advance/all credit cards accepted, cash is preferred. The websites guarantee confidentiality.
One of five siblings who grew up in poverty, Lola's mother is dead and her father was abusive. For her it's just another job. There are no regrets. "It was TC who did all the running around for me, got my papers done and put me on a flight to Delhi," she says.
Lola is not alone. She is part of a growing army of fair-skinned prostitutes, about 3,000 of them in the Capital and about the same number in the other parts of the country. They are from Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan, all of which are part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Replacing the earlier favourites, imports from Nepal, and charging 40 per cent more than Indian prostitutes, they are changing the rules of the game, feeding on the Indian fascination for white skin and the greater openness with which they can promote their sexual favours, through classified advertisements in newspapers and professionally-designed websites.
That the fascination for white skin is transnational is evident from the string of recent arrests. Last year, on December 10, a Delhi-based hotel manager, Shanker Mishra, was arrested in Rajkot along with an Uzbek prostitute in her late 20s, Ragini, a native of Tashkent. Initial investigations revealed that Mishra would provide women to cash-rich traders and garment exporters in Rajkot, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Indore.
A little earlier, on October 30, another sex racket was busted in Mahipalpur, Delhi, where three women of CIS origin, Aslefya, 23, Sonya, 25, and Roma, 27, were arrested following a scuffle between a few pimps and locals in front of a guesthouse, 365 Inn.
In July, the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police arrested two CIS prostitutes when a decoy customer was sent to strike a deal with them. The pimp, Goldy, came with the two foreign women in a car. They were here on a six-month tourist visa and had been in the Gulf before coming to India; with their stay here governed by a Rs 1.5 lakh contract for each girl for one month. The women will be deported soon.
But it's quite likely they will be back, admits Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime, Mumbai, Rakesh Maria. "The prostitution racket involving CIS women is very well organised. The Indian pimps are in close touch with their counterparts in Dubai and CIS countries," he says. It's the culmination of events that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and gained momentum with the entry of young CIS women into Dubai, transforming it into a major centre of prostitution.
According to an article in The New Yorker in 2008, an "almost perfect recipe: mass immigration, mass transience, a tremendous concentration of money and anonymity, and a robust demand for labour". But a crackdown in Dubai in December 2007 when 240 people were arrested and in May last year when 2,713 prostitutes were detained as well as the deportation of 228 Uzbek women from Thailand recently, ensured that many women moved south, a process hastened by the meltdown.
Inside the new trade
Getting a light-skinned prostitute is rather easy. All one has to do is call one of the numbers flashed in the two dozen-odd difficult-to-ignore massage advertisements in the classified pages of leading dailies. The sales pitch starts as soon as the ad is mentioned. Then there's the Net, where a search for 'escort service' with the city name yields pages of results.
Most of the women come as tourists from the impoverished republics of the former Soviet Union, particularly Uzbekistan. Some are coerced while others get into this business voluntarily.
The so-called 'aunties', CIS women who have been illegally living in India for several years, act as the interface between the women and local pimps. The aunties are local agents of a mafia back home and share up to 50 per cent of the profits.
Most prostitutes are not paid; they serve 'aunties' under informal contracts that pay off loans taken back home by their families in return for services provided here. The contracts run for three to six months, during which up to a third of a prostitute's earnings go repay family loans.
Lured by big money, some women come back as 'freelancers'. They then stay with an Indian pimp, who sometimes helps them get a visa. They also pay these women a daily fee which is usually between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000. Most women reinvest their earnings to make a profit; exporting leather garments is a favoured avenue.
The pimps also make money by organising rooms for clients. Five-star hotels, farmhouses and guesthouses are hotspots, with smaller establishments bending rules to ensure anonymity. Official addresses are avoided.
Some women aren't prostitutes and others aren't just that. As part of dancing troupes, they are called 'belly dancers' or 'item girls' and serve as hostesses and showgirls at parties.
Lax visa rules make for a thriving sex trade. Joint Commissioner of Police,Crime,Mumbai, Rakesh Maria says, "The pimps in India, Dubai and CIS countries work in close coordination." A secret report of the NSA had expressed concern over foreigners buying land illegally. Others have established guesthouses and restaurants.
Only half a dozen arrests were made last year; there were no convictions. According to the law, soliciting or encouraging the exchange of sexual services for money is a sex crime and not prostitution. Sometimes these women are deported, but most of them come back.
The Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls (Amendment) Act, 1978, is toothless. Most arrested women get bail as soliciting is difficult to prove. This prompted the Supreme Court last month to ask the government to legalise prostitution, on a PIL filed by an NGO called the Bachpan Bachao Andolan.
"The odds were against staying in Dubai," says Nagina, a 27-year-old Muslim from Samarkand who was in Dubai till a month ago. She escaped the police but many of her friends are in jail for illegally entering the country on false passports. She doesn't like to go to a bar to meet a client as "it is against my religion". But prostitution? "They need our services and we provide it," she says. Or take Roma, a 25-year-old from Karshi, Uzbekistan, who ran away from a violent father when she was 17. She was sucked into prostitution and sent to Dubai where her travel documents were confiscated. She is now a veteran with seven years of experience and this is her third stay in India. She lives in a three-storey flat in Delhi, atop a spiral staircase. It's a big living room with bare orange walls, a dressing table with lights and a smorgasbord of cosmetics. As she settles down in a couch to talk, the only sign of her profession is a roommate who lies huddled in the bedroom next door, sleeping in mid-afternoon, working off the effects of a late night. As she flicks the ash from her cigarette, Roma says, "Only the best survive. The pressure to do well is so high. I learned English and have been to the US and Europe. I am okay with this life."
Two of the three prostitutes arrested in the Capital in October last year.As the hunting ground shifts from Dubai, the CIS women, often referred to as "night butterflies", find India easier to work in. The classified advertisements in newspapers are easy to spot, printed by the dozens every day, five lines each costing Rs 1,800, giving mobile numbers, the option of paying by credit card and dropping cryptic hints of "body massage" assuring "full satisfaction". Translate what that means: accompanying clients on long drives, having sex with them during the lunch hour in pimp hideouts around commercial hubs or in designated safehouses, and playing host at 'stag' parties where they serve alcohol and food skimpily dressed. All this for prices ranging from Rs 8,000 to Rs 30,000 depending on the duration.
It's difficult to miss them, whether it is five-star hotel lobbies, elite clubs or farmhouses. They come here on tourist visas for three to six months and stay with 'aunties', women from CIS countries, who act as mediators between agents in home countries and pimps in India. The women are paid on a daily basis.
In Delhi, for example, over 150 Indian pimps host them and some of them have four to five CIS women on their payroll. The pimps pocket the money from clients, as payment for their upkeep as well as promotion. Call at any of the numbers advertised in the newspapers and they are quite blunt. "She will do all you want," says the male voice at the other end. "Trained handling" means the client will relive his "wildest fantasies". And when they say "full satisfaction guaranteed", they mean "the girl will do whatever the clients wants, in the way they want, with great ability". Some even promise to refresh clients with world class 'blwoiob' (blowjob) 'ser'(vice), the misspelling deliberate to avoid trouble.
Some get poetic, luring clients with phrases such as "indulge yourself in the most electrifying experience of your lifetime with our bewitching masseuses" or proclaiming that carnal pleasures can be sublime, "where mind and soul entwine together in heights of pleasure". So says a classified ad aimed at older customers. The idea is all are welcome, from the cash-rich entrepreneur to the high performing salesman, who gets sex as a bonus.
There is an even easier option, the Internet. Google 'escort service' and the name of the city where you intend to access the services, and voila, the choices pop up faster than Roger Federer's serves. Professionally designed websites offer a host of services and a detailed rate list. Again, all it requires is a call to the given number, the time of requirement, and the specific service.
"Whether for pleasure trips, business occasions, corporate events, functions or dinner dates", "especially handpicked to provide the highest level of service possible with professionalism, integrity and discretion assured at all times for the discerning gentlemen," declares one website. Clients can book their services from anywhere in the world, can even outsource the planning of a fun-filled holiday to them. Payment is to be made in advance and clients are given the convenient option of paying by credit card.
A pimp strikes a deal in a shady corner.Declares one website, "For gentlemen who would want to move beyond the confines of the hourly session, I offer these exclusive getaway packages," to the scenic towns of Nainital and Shimla in summers and to regal Jaipur and Agra in winters. Yet another tells its prospective customers, "My favourite pastime in the field of the adult industry, always has been related to couples, including lesbian or bisexual female couples and groups of people."
Their skin colour is their biggest selling point. "Sex with light-skinned women is aspirational," says Pramada Menon, a Delhi-based gender activist. The CIS women agree. "Indians are so conscious of their colour and ours," says Sarah, 27, from Tashkent, who has been here now for five months on a tourist visa. So much so that Indian women find it difficult to counter the 'white cult' that is taking over the premium flesh trade. Indian women have to be hard-sold. So if it's an Indian woman, the advertisement reads: she is a 'Punjabi' (read intense and fair), 'model' (slim and beautiful), 'airhostess' (suave and smart), 'hygienic' (clean), 'broadminded' and 'sober'. Broadminded assures clients that the women will play out their fantasies, while 'sober' indicates that they will be professional about it.
"East European girls have a different look and they are exotic for Indians as much as Delhi girls are unusual for Americans," that's a recorded voice playing on Vivek's phone--he operates in an upmartket neighbourhood of the Capital and has four CIS women on his roster. "Most of our clients have gained money recently and want new girls every time," he adds.
CIS women also offer anonymity. "For our older, wealthier and regular customers, it is not about sex but courtship," says Feruza, 32, an Uzbek woman. "They want somebody to give them an honest hearing and like the way we pamper them. Language is an issue but we can talk them into relaxation. They like that they are in command and that actually helps them surrender to us," she says. Ask Nitin, who runs a computer hardware business at a commercial complex in Delhi. He is in his mid-30s and is married with children. For him, the once-a-week sexcapade is an addiction he cannot do without.
"These women have an element of professional detachment. They are here for a few months and you don't know whether you will ever see them again. They are not interested in you beyond the task well done," he says, comparing them with their Indian counterparts. "But the Indians want your number. They give theirs, want to know what I do and how much I earn. Then they go on about how they belong to a good family too but have been forced into prostitution by some compelling circumstances. That is so irritating."
Shrugs Shruti, a 19-year-old college girl who doubles as a call girl and is on the roster of two pimps in Delhi, "If Indian men are looking for white women for their novelty, white men are interested in us. They give us generous tips." But why do white women attract so many repeat customers? "We cannot do things that white women do with Indian men," says Shruti huffily.
CIS women dress well, wear immaculate make-up and carry the best accessories. They also play nice enough to have some men in their thrall. Roma gives the example of a 35-year-old married businessman, who offered to marry her. When she refused, he would insist only on her, paying extra for her services. "Aunty wanted me to meet him more often as money was coming thick and fast, but I stopped because he was getting emotional about the whole affair," she says, adding on second thoughts, "but it is not a bad idea to get married after all."
The 'aunties' are the key to the business. Usually heavily-built, manicured, made-up, chain-smokers, they pronounce their verdict with the authority borne of years of handling pimps, visa agents and police officials. "I tell my girls to come back if the clients get rough. They can call me any time even when they are with the clients. If they don't like something, they can stop right there," says one aunty. Four of them have formidable reputations. They have their areas of domination but their areas of operation overlap.
White women with their partners enjoying a meal after a hard day's work in Delhi.With names like Svetlana, Diana, Nafisa and Sweta, these aunties have never been prostitutes themselves but are cashing in on their strong Indian connections. The fathers of two aunties were diplomats stationed in India 20 years ago; another has a KGB background. For them, it's not a racket but a business. Says an aunty, dressed in a long black skirt, a thick bead necklace nestling in the V of a cleavage-popping white T-shirt, "More then 20,000 girls have come and gone from India in several lots over the past two years. Most were from CIS countries and have done well for themselves." The numbers are lower than in the UAE and Dubai, she adds.
These aunties are careful and so are the women. Unlike their Indian counterparts, they always carry a pack of flavoured condoms. Cleanliness is an issue and they insist that clients take a shower before going to bed with them. They have a dress code for bed too: red and black lingerie from the best brands. Sometimes the aunties insist on sending Indian prostitutes first. Only when she gives an all-clear signal is the client allowed to sleep with a white woman.
In order not to attract undue attention, only two girls are lodged in one flat each in areas close to busy neighbourhoods. They wear Fabindia clothes by day, have a fetish for leather garments at night and sport dark eyeliner at all times. "That's our fashion statement," says Bessica, 27. The mother of two has been in India for four months after her jobless husband persuaded her to come here. "I was in the UAE and Dubai before I came to India. The girls of my generation do feel the pangs. We are spiritually dead," she says.
Most of the women come directly to aunties to pay off loans their family took back home. "It is according to an informal contract between the family and the agent back home where the girls are required to stay overseas for three to six months to pay off their debt by making themselves available for prostitution," says Mashhura, 28, who belongs to Buxoro in Uzbekistan. Some come back to make money for themselves and get in touch with Indian pimps like Vivek who maintains four such 'freelancers' and pays each Rs 10,000 per day for their period of stay. They sometimes end up working 12 hours a day, meeting six different clients, as pimps make Rs 35,000 a day, which includes the police cut, their stay and other expenses.
Rajiv, 30, a pimp in Delhi, has six such women in his list. He calls prospective clients to his home and gives them one of his rooms. His wife, a tall woman in a salwar-kameez, who listens to him negotiating from behind the curtain of the living room and often walks out to tell the client sternly, "the price is fixed."
The number of CIS-origin prostitutes in India is growing. Four hundred prostitutes are expected to arrive in the Capital during the Commonwealth Games to be held later in the year. "We know there will be great demand for women then and special arrangements are being made, like renting safehouses. Some Indian pimps are even buying flats," says Avita, 30, who came here with her cousin from Tashkent.
Insiders also say that some girls are brought to India as part of dance troupes. These women perform group dances in revealing clothes, mostly at private parties. According to Rishikant, a 32-year-old activist who works for the NGO, Shakti Vahini, and has rescued more than 1,000 girls in the last decade from prostitution, "Their number has increased significantly in the last one-and-a-half years." He explains that the police are aware of the problem but can do little as senior officers are involved.
India's anti-trafficking law, the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls (Amendment) Act (SITA), 1978, aims at combating the commercialisation of the flesh trade (brothels, prostitution rings and pimping). Prostitution is not illegal. But in practice, SITA is not commonly used; instead the Indian Penal Code is deployed to charge sex workers with crimes such as public indecency or public nuisance, punishable with imprisonment up to six months or fine or both. If the sex worker is a minor, the client may get a sentence of seven to 10 years. But, given the overt manner in which the flesh trade operates, it cannot happen without the support of the police. Former police officer Kiran Bedi calls it the "collective failure of the whole criminal judicial system."
Failure or not, the women don't mind. "We get to travel, stay in new places and make friends. Yes, the money is good. But I like it here as well," says Kate, 27, who was presented as a model to an exporter in Delhi with whom she would be travelling to Goa. She arrived in India about a month-and-a-half ago and has already been with 50 men. As she leaves, dressed in tight jeans and a brown psychedelic top under a black leather jacket, a white taxi waiting outside to take her to her 51st client, she shrugs her shoulders.
"I was deported from Israel last year. The next few days will be tricky. It's Republic Day and security is tight.'' It's one of the perils of her profession. But one she carries off as easily as the Christian Louboutin high heels she bought online last year. It's price she extracts for the pleasure she provides.
Brothel to boudoir
The changing nature of the premium sex market
The flesh trade in India has become a big money-spinner with about 30 lakh girls (the population of Pune) involved, according to a recent government-commissioned study. Most women forced into prostitution due to abject poverty are from Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. They live in sub-human conditions in congested brothels in areas such as G.B. Road in Delhi or Kamatipura in Mumbai. Till 2000, the women for the so-called 'premium category' were trafficked illegally across the border from Nepal and Myanmar for Rs 1,000 a night. Things started to change when the fruits of globalisation reached younger urban Indian men thanks to the robust growth in the outsourcing industry and the advent of multinational companies that paid fat salaries. On the home turf too, voluntarism replaced coercion thanks to the easy, and big, money to be made here. The flesh trade soon became an organised business; pimps became 'agents' who would now move around in flashy cars, unlike in the past where the contact person was a taxi driver or paan shop owner. Pimps no longer meet clients, preferring to send women in chauffeur-driven cars with full payment to be paid in advance before they step out of the car. The services are paid for by the hour, and not night.
"It is not just about quality sex but it is about a quality experience that is more about companionship," says 26-year-old Rishab, single and an executive in a Gurgaon-based multinational company. "They are out not to hide but to flaunt," he says, adding that he considers being in the company of light-skinned women an indicator of his success.
Mihir Srivastava
January 21, 2010
Lola, 22, is a tall girl with high, thin eyebrows on a slender face. Her features are sharp but her eyes are uninterested, fixed at a painting on the wall of the coffee shop, as she tries hard to explain, in broken English, why she is in India. Clad in a too-tight pink sweatshirt, faded cream shorts and shiny red boots, her right hand bearing a cocktail ring which she keeps twisting nervously, her blue nail varnish chipped, she seems a far cry from her alluring nocturnal avatar as one of the Capital's high-priced prostitutes. She speaks of how she came to work here two-and-a-half months ago. Her boyfriend TC, not Tom Cruise, she clarifies, momentarily showing signs of life, joined her last month. Both are clear about what they want from their lives--enough money to buy a house in Tashkent, their hometown in Uzbekistan.
The cost of fantasy
CIS girls now dominate the high-end sex market offering sexual pleasure as leisure
SERVICES TIME IN HOURS RATE IN RUPEES/per head
One trip (sexual intercourse) Two 8,000
Two trips Two 10,000
Two trips Four 15,000
Unlimited trips Eight or overnight 25,000
Orgy (at least one girl per person) Eight or overnight 25,000
Escort service (travel outstation with the client, all expenses are met) Per day 25,000
Play hostess at a stag party Four hours 15,000
Posing as nude model for photography and sketching One hour 5,000
Payment is in advance/all credit cards accepted, cash is preferred. The websites guarantee confidentiality.
One of five siblings who grew up in poverty, Lola's mother is dead and her father was abusive. For her it's just another job. There are no regrets. "It was TC who did all the running around for me, got my papers done and put me on a flight to Delhi," she says.
Lola is not alone. She is part of a growing army of fair-skinned prostitutes, about 3,000 of them in the Capital and about the same number in the other parts of the country. They are from Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan, all of which are part of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
Replacing the earlier favourites, imports from Nepal, and charging 40 per cent more than Indian prostitutes, they are changing the rules of the game, feeding on the Indian fascination for white skin and the greater openness with which they can promote their sexual favours, through classified advertisements in newspapers and professionally-designed websites.
That the fascination for white skin is transnational is evident from the string of recent arrests. Last year, on December 10, a Delhi-based hotel manager, Shanker Mishra, was arrested in Rajkot along with an Uzbek prostitute in her late 20s, Ragini, a native of Tashkent. Initial investigations revealed that Mishra would provide women to cash-rich traders and garment exporters in Rajkot, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Indore.
A little earlier, on October 30, another sex racket was busted in Mahipalpur, Delhi, where three women of CIS origin, Aslefya, 23, Sonya, 25, and Roma, 27, were arrested following a scuffle between a few pimps and locals in front of a guesthouse, 365 Inn.
In July, the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police arrested two CIS prostitutes when a decoy customer was sent to strike a deal with them. The pimp, Goldy, came with the two foreign women in a car. They were here on a six-month tourist visa and had been in the Gulf before coming to India; with their stay here governed by a Rs 1.5 lakh contract for each girl for one month. The women will be deported soon.
But it's quite likely they will be back, admits Joint Commissioner of Police, Crime, Mumbai, Rakesh Maria. "The prostitution racket involving CIS women is very well organised. The Indian pimps are in close touch with their counterparts in Dubai and CIS countries," he says. It's the culmination of events that began with the collapse of the Soviet Union and gained momentum with the entry of young CIS women into Dubai, transforming it into a major centre of prostitution.
According to an article in The New Yorker in 2008, an "almost perfect recipe: mass immigration, mass transience, a tremendous concentration of money and anonymity, and a robust demand for labour". But a crackdown in Dubai in December 2007 when 240 people were arrested and in May last year when 2,713 prostitutes were detained as well as the deportation of 228 Uzbek women from Thailand recently, ensured that many women moved south, a process hastened by the meltdown.
Inside the new trade
Getting a light-skinned prostitute is rather easy. All one has to do is call one of the numbers flashed in the two dozen-odd difficult-to-ignore massage advertisements in the classified pages of leading dailies. The sales pitch starts as soon as the ad is mentioned. Then there's the Net, where a search for 'escort service' with the city name yields pages of results.
Most of the women come as tourists from the impoverished republics of the former Soviet Union, particularly Uzbekistan. Some are coerced while others get into this business voluntarily.
The so-called 'aunties', CIS women who have been illegally living in India for several years, act as the interface between the women and local pimps. The aunties are local agents of a mafia back home and share up to 50 per cent of the profits.
Most prostitutes are not paid; they serve 'aunties' under informal contracts that pay off loans taken back home by their families in return for services provided here. The contracts run for three to six months, during which up to a third of a prostitute's earnings go repay family loans.
Lured by big money, some women come back as 'freelancers'. They then stay with an Indian pimp, who sometimes helps them get a visa. They also pay these women a daily fee which is usually between Rs 10,000 and Rs 15,000. Most women reinvest their earnings to make a profit; exporting leather garments is a favoured avenue.
The pimps also make money by organising rooms for clients. Five-star hotels, farmhouses and guesthouses are hotspots, with smaller establishments bending rules to ensure anonymity. Official addresses are avoided.
Some women aren't prostitutes and others aren't just that. As part of dancing troupes, they are called 'belly dancers' or 'item girls' and serve as hostesses and showgirls at parties.
Lax visa rules make for a thriving sex trade. Joint Commissioner of Police,Crime,Mumbai, Rakesh Maria says, "The pimps in India, Dubai and CIS countries work in close coordination." A secret report of the NSA had expressed concern over foreigners buying land illegally. Others have established guesthouses and restaurants.
Only half a dozen arrests were made last year; there were no convictions. According to the law, soliciting or encouraging the exchange of sexual services for money is a sex crime and not prostitution. Sometimes these women are deported, but most of them come back.
The Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls (Amendment) Act, 1978, is toothless. Most arrested women get bail as soliciting is difficult to prove. This prompted the Supreme Court last month to ask the government to legalise prostitution, on a PIL filed by an NGO called the Bachpan Bachao Andolan.
"The odds were against staying in Dubai," says Nagina, a 27-year-old Muslim from Samarkand who was in Dubai till a month ago. She escaped the police but many of her friends are in jail for illegally entering the country on false passports. She doesn't like to go to a bar to meet a client as "it is against my religion". But prostitution? "They need our services and we provide it," she says. Or take Roma, a 25-year-old from Karshi, Uzbekistan, who ran away from a violent father when she was 17. She was sucked into prostitution and sent to Dubai where her travel documents were confiscated. She is now a veteran with seven years of experience and this is her third stay in India. She lives in a three-storey flat in Delhi, atop a spiral staircase. It's a big living room with bare orange walls, a dressing table with lights and a smorgasbord of cosmetics. As she settles down in a couch to talk, the only sign of her profession is a roommate who lies huddled in the bedroom next door, sleeping in mid-afternoon, working off the effects of a late night. As she flicks the ash from her cigarette, Roma says, "Only the best survive. The pressure to do well is so high. I learned English and have been to the US and Europe. I am okay with this life."
Two of the three prostitutes arrested in the Capital in October last year.As the hunting ground shifts from Dubai, the CIS women, often referred to as "night butterflies", find India easier to work in. The classified advertisements in newspapers are easy to spot, printed by the dozens every day, five lines each costing Rs 1,800, giving mobile numbers, the option of paying by credit card and dropping cryptic hints of "body massage" assuring "full satisfaction". Translate what that means: accompanying clients on long drives, having sex with them during the lunch hour in pimp hideouts around commercial hubs or in designated safehouses, and playing host at 'stag' parties where they serve alcohol and food skimpily dressed. All this for prices ranging from Rs 8,000 to Rs 30,000 depending on the duration.
It's difficult to miss them, whether it is five-star hotel lobbies, elite clubs or farmhouses. They come here on tourist visas for three to six months and stay with 'aunties', women from CIS countries, who act as mediators between agents in home countries and pimps in India. The women are paid on a daily basis.
In Delhi, for example, over 150 Indian pimps host them and some of them have four to five CIS women on their payroll. The pimps pocket the money from clients, as payment for their upkeep as well as promotion. Call at any of the numbers advertised in the newspapers and they are quite blunt. "She will do all you want," says the male voice at the other end. "Trained handling" means the client will relive his "wildest fantasies". And when they say "full satisfaction guaranteed", they mean "the girl will do whatever the clients wants, in the way they want, with great ability". Some even promise to refresh clients with world class 'blwoiob' (blowjob) 'ser'(vice), the misspelling deliberate to avoid trouble.
Some get poetic, luring clients with phrases such as "indulge yourself in the most electrifying experience of your lifetime with our bewitching masseuses" or proclaiming that carnal pleasures can be sublime, "where mind and soul entwine together in heights of pleasure". So says a classified ad aimed at older customers. The idea is all are welcome, from the cash-rich entrepreneur to the high performing salesman, who gets sex as a bonus.
There is an even easier option, the Internet. Google 'escort service' and the name of the city where you intend to access the services, and voila, the choices pop up faster than Roger Federer's serves. Professionally designed websites offer a host of services and a detailed rate list. Again, all it requires is a call to the given number, the time of requirement, and the specific service.
"Whether for pleasure trips, business occasions, corporate events, functions or dinner dates", "especially handpicked to provide the highest level of service possible with professionalism, integrity and discretion assured at all times for the discerning gentlemen," declares one website. Clients can book their services from anywhere in the world, can even outsource the planning of a fun-filled holiday to them. Payment is to be made in advance and clients are given the convenient option of paying by credit card.
A pimp strikes a deal in a shady corner.Declares one website, "For gentlemen who would want to move beyond the confines of the hourly session, I offer these exclusive getaway packages," to the scenic towns of Nainital and Shimla in summers and to regal Jaipur and Agra in winters. Yet another tells its prospective customers, "My favourite pastime in the field of the adult industry, always has been related to couples, including lesbian or bisexual female couples and groups of people."
Their skin colour is their biggest selling point. "Sex with light-skinned women is aspirational," says Pramada Menon, a Delhi-based gender activist. The CIS women agree. "Indians are so conscious of their colour and ours," says Sarah, 27, from Tashkent, who has been here now for five months on a tourist visa. So much so that Indian women find it difficult to counter the 'white cult' that is taking over the premium flesh trade. Indian women have to be hard-sold. So if it's an Indian woman, the advertisement reads: she is a 'Punjabi' (read intense and fair), 'model' (slim and beautiful), 'airhostess' (suave and smart), 'hygienic' (clean), 'broadminded' and 'sober'. Broadminded assures clients that the women will play out their fantasies, while 'sober' indicates that they will be professional about it.
"East European girls have a different look and they are exotic for Indians as much as Delhi girls are unusual for Americans," that's a recorded voice playing on Vivek's phone--he operates in an upmartket neighbourhood of the Capital and has four CIS women on his roster. "Most of our clients have gained money recently and want new girls every time," he adds.
CIS women also offer anonymity. "For our older, wealthier and regular customers, it is not about sex but courtship," says Feruza, 32, an Uzbek woman. "They want somebody to give them an honest hearing and like the way we pamper them. Language is an issue but we can talk them into relaxation. They like that they are in command and that actually helps them surrender to us," she says. Ask Nitin, who runs a computer hardware business at a commercial complex in Delhi. He is in his mid-30s and is married with children. For him, the once-a-week sexcapade is an addiction he cannot do without.
"These women have an element of professional detachment. They are here for a few months and you don't know whether you will ever see them again. They are not interested in you beyond the task well done," he says, comparing them with their Indian counterparts. "But the Indians want your number. They give theirs, want to know what I do and how much I earn. Then they go on about how they belong to a good family too but have been forced into prostitution by some compelling circumstances. That is so irritating."
Shrugs Shruti, a 19-year-old college girl who doubles as a call girl and is on the roster of two pimps in Delhi, "If Indian men are looking for white women for their novelty, white men are interested in us. They give us generous tips." But why do white women attract so many repeat customers? "We cannot do things that white women do with Indian men," says Shruti huffily.
CIS women dress well, wear immaculate make-up and carry the best accessories. They also play nice enough to have some men in their thrall. Roma gives the example of a 35-year-old married businessman, who offered to marry her. When she refused, he would insist only on her, paying extra for her services. "Aunty wanted me to meet him more often as money was coming thick and fast, but I stopped because he was getting emotional about the whole affair," she says, adding on second thoughts, "but it is not a bad idea to get married after all."
The 'aunties' are the key to the business. Usually heavily-built, manicured, made-up, chain-smokers, they pronounce their verdict with the authority borne of years of handling pimps, visa agents and police officials. "I tell my girls to come back if the clients get rough. They can call me any time even when they are with the clients. If they don't like something, they can stop right there," says one aunty. Four of them have formidable reputations. They have their areas of domination but their areas of operation overlap.
White women with their partners enjoying a meal after a hard day's work in Delhi.With names like Svetlana, Diana, Nafisa and Sweta, these aunties have never been prostitutes themselves but are cashing in on their strong Indian connections. The fathers of two aunties were diplomats stationed in India 20 years ago; another has a KGB background. For them, it's not a racket but a business. Says an aunty, dressed in a long black skirt, a thick bead necklace nestling in the V of a cleavage-popping white T-shirt, "More then 20,000 girls have come and gone from India in several lots over the past two years. Most were from CIS countries and have done well for themselves." The numbers are lower than in the UAE and Dubai, she adds.
These aunties are careful and so are the women. Unlike their Indian counterparts, they always carry a pack of flavoured condoms. Cleanliness is an issue and they insist that clients take a shower before going to bed with them. They have a dress code for bed too: red and black lingerie from the best brands. Sometimes the aunties insist on sending Indian prostitutes first. Only when she gives an all-clear signal is the client allowed to sleep with a white woman.
In order not to attract undue attention, only two girls are lodged in one flat each in areas close to busy neighbourhoods. They wear Fabindia clothes by day, have a fetish for leather garments at night and sport dark eyeliner at all times. "That's our fashion statement," says Bessica, 27. The mother of two has been in India for four months after her jobless husband persuaded her to come here. "I was in the UAE and Dubai before I came to India. The girls of my generation do feel the pangs. We are spiritually dead," she says.
Most of the women come directly to aunties to pay off loans their family took back home. "It is according to an informal contract between the family and the agent back home where the girls are required to stay overseas for three to six months to pay off their debt by making themselves available for prostitution," says Mashhura, 28, who belongs to Buxoro in Uzbekistan. Some come back to make money for themselves and get in touch with Indian pimps like Vivek who maintains four such 'freelancers' and pays each Rs 10,000 per day for their period of stay. They sometimes end up working 12 hours a day, meeting six different clients, as pimps make Rs 35,000 a day, which includes the police cut, their stay and other expenses.
Rajiv, 30, a pimp in Delhi, has six such women in his list. He calls prospective clients to his home and gives them one of his rooms. His wife, a tall woman in a salwar-kameez, who listens to him negotiating from behind the curtain of the living room and often walks out to tell the client sternly, "the price is fixed."
The number of CIS-origin prostitutes in India is growing. Four hundred prostitutes are expected to arrive in the Capital during the Commonwealth Games to be held later in the year. "We know there will be great demand for women then and special arrangements are being made, like renting safehouses. Some Indian pimps are even buying flats," says Avita, 30, who came here with her cousin from Tashkent.
Insiders also say that some girls are brought to India as part of dance troupes. These women perform group dances in revealing clothes, mostly at private parties. According to Rishikant, a 32-year-old activist who works for the NGO, Shakti Vahini, and has rescued more than 1,000 girls in the last decade from prostitution, "Their number has increased significantly in the last one-and-a-half years." He explains that the police are aware of the problem but can do little as senior officers are involved.
India's anti-trafficking law, the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls (Amendment) Act (SITA), 1978, aims at combating the commercialisation of the flesh trade (brothels, prostitution rings and pimping). Prostitution is not illegal. But in practice, SITA is not commonly used; instead the Indian Penal Code is deployed to charge sex workers with crimes such as public indecency or public nuisance, punishable with imprisonment up to six months or fine or both. If the sex worker is a minor, the client may get a sentence of seven to 10 years. But, given the overt manner in which the flesh trade operates, it cannot happen without the support of the police. Former police officer Kiran Bedi calls it the "collective failure of the whole criminal judicial system."
Failure or not, the women don't mind. "We get to travel, stay in new places and make friends. Yes, the money is good. But I like it here as well," says Kate, 27, who was presented as a model to an exporter in Delhi with whom she would be travelling to Goa. She arrived in India about a month-and-a-half ago and has already been with 50 men. As she leaves, dressed in tight jeans and a brown psychedelic top under a black leather jacket, a white taxi waiting outside to take her to her 51st client, she shrugs her shoulders.
"I was deported from Israel last year. The next few days will be tricky. It's Republic Day and security is tight.'' It's one of the perils of her profession. But one she carries off as easily as the Christian Louboutin high heels she bought online last year. It's price she extracts for the pleasure she provides.
Brothel to boudoir
The changing nature of the premium sex market
The flesh trade in India has become a big money-spinner with about 30 lakh girls (the population of Pune) involved, according to a recent government-commissioned study. Most women forced into prostitution due to abject poverty are from Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. They live in sub-human conditions in congested brothels in areas such as G.B. Road in Delhi or Kamatipura in Mumbai. Till 2000, the women for the so-called 'premium category' were trafficked illegally across the border from Nepal and Myanmar for Rs 1,000 a night. Things started to change when the fruits of globalisation reached younger urban Indian men thanks to the robust growth in the outsourcing industry and the advent of multinational companies that paid fat salaries. On the home turf too, voluntarism replaced coercion thanks to the easy, and big, money to be made here. The flesh trade soon became an organised business; pimps became 'agents' who would now move around in flashy cars, unlike in the past where the contact person was a taxi driver or paan shop owner. Pimps no longer meet clients, preferring to send women in chauffeur-driven cars with full payment to be paid in advance before they step out of the car. The services are paid for by the hour, and not night.
"It is not just about quality sex but it is about a quality experience that is more about companionship," says 26-year-old Rishab, single and an executive in a Gurgaon-based multinational company. "They are out not to hide but to flaunt," he says, adding that he considers being in the company of light-skinned women an indicator of his success.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
75 Manipur Children rescued from traffickers
Imphal, Jan 19 : At least 75 children including 24 girls were rescued in the year 2009 while being trafficked outside Manipur, according to sources.
The year 2009 witnessed several children and girls being rescued by NGOs or by the police while being transported to cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Delhi.
Jubita Hajarimayum, secretary of Ereima Gender Empowerment Resource Centre asserted that the development in Manipur could be brought only when the issues relating tochildren and women are solved.
According to reports, 25 children hailing from Kaibi village in Senapati district were rescued by Kolkata police from an Andhra Pradesh-bound train in June last year. Six girls from Churanchandpur district were rescued, also in June last year from an inter-State bus and the girls were reportedly being taken to Delhi. About 15 girls were rescued last year by Child Line, Imphal while they were being trafficked to Chennai.
A total of about 110 girls including minor girls were rescued in January 2008, according to available records. The minor girls who were rescued were either found in illegal homes or intercepted while being trafficked to other States of the country or outside the country.
Significantly, the victims belonged to poor families who are ignorant and the traffickers take advantage of their innocence and lure them by promising them free education outside the State.
Besides, Manipur is not lagging behind in the matter of crimes against women as well.
In one such incident, a woman was murdered by her husband in Thoubal district on December 2 last. The murderer identified as H Ibomcha strangulated his wife to death. Several rape cases had also had taken place in the State during 2009, some of which are unregistered with police
The year 2009 witnessed several children and girls being rescued by NGOs or by the police while being transported to cities like Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata and Delhi.
Jubita Hajarimayum, secretary of Ereima Gender Empowerment Resource Centre asserted that the development in Manipur could be brought only when the issues relating tochildren and women are solved.
According to reports, 25 children hailing from Kaibi village in Senapati district were rescued by Kolkata police from an Andhra Pradesh-bound train in June last year. Six girls from Churanchandpur district were rescued, also in June last year from an inter-State bus and the girls were reportedly being taken to Delhi. About 15 girls were rescued last year by Child Line, Imphal while they were being trafficked to Chennai.
A total of about 110 girls including minor girls were rescued in January 2008, according to available records. The minor girls who were rescued were either found in illegal homes or intercepted while being trafficked to other States of the country or outside the country.
Significantly, the victims belonged to poor families who are ignorant and the traffickers take advantage of their innocence and lure them by promising them free education outside the State.
Besides, Manipur is not lagging behind in the matter of crimes against women as well.
In one such incident, a woman was murdered by her husband in Thoubal district on December 2 last. The murderer identified as H Ibomcha strangulated his wife to death. Several rape cases had also had taken place in the State during 2009, some of which are unregistered with police
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Child trafficking in a civilised country like India unaceptable: SC
TNN, 16 January 2010,
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday firmly told the Centre that the scourge of child trafficking and its extent in a civilised country like India was just not acceptable and the government had to strengthen mechanism to curb it.
Examining the issue in the light of submissions made by Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium, a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and A K Pattnaik said: "In a civilized country you cannot have the problem of this magnitude. We need to identify the places where it happens and strengthen implementation mechanism."
Submitting a report titled `The Indian Child: India's Eternal Hope and Future', Subramanium suggested that the Goa Childrens Act, 2003, could serve as a model legislation.
"Not only does it define child trafficking but also seeks to provide punishment for abuse and assault of children through child trafficking for different purposes such as labour, sale of body parts, organs, adoption, sexual offences of pedophilia, child prostitution, child pornography and child sex tourism," he said. He even set out the need for having a rescue plan for children caught in prostitution and trade.
Though the Bench appreciated the report, it was not oblivious of the problems on the ground. "Our real problem is implementation. We do not lack material. The whole problem emanates from poverty. In a number of cases, you rescue these children and put them in remand homes. When their parents are informed they are not ready to take them back as they cannot afford them two square meals or because of the social stigma." it said.
"You must have adequate remand homes with infrastructure and proper hygiene conditions. There must be a programme for sending these children to school and schools must be told to admit these children. You need to first chalk out this programme on priority basis," it suggested.
Appearing for petitioner NGO `Bachpan Bachao Andolan", senior advocate Colin Gonsalves said the government for years have been sitting on an NHRC report suggesting an alarming figure of 44,000 children reported missing annually of which only 11,000 get traced.
In this regard, the Bench asked Gonsalves along with several other NGOs like Prajwala, Sankalp and National Legal Services Authority to make suggestions within a week and present a comprehensive report. Advocate Aparna Bhatt representing NGO Prajwala informed the court that by involving NGOs in rehabilitation work, the victims of trafficking have benefited. As a model case, she cited Andhra Pradesh where victims of trafficking are given land. The matter was posted for hearing on January 22.
TNN, 16 January 2010,
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday firmly told the Centre that the scourge of child trafficking and its extent in a civilised country like India was just not acceptable and the government had to strengthen mechanism to curb it.
Examining the issue in the light of submissions made by Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium, a Bench of Justices Dalveer Bhandari and A K Pattnaik said: "In a civilized country you cannot have the problem of this magnitude. We need to identify the places where it happens and strengthen implementation mechanism."
Submitting a report titled `The Indian Child: India's Eternal Hope and Future', Subramanium suggested that the Goa Childrens Act, 2003, could serve as a model legislation.
"Not only does it define child trafficking but also seeks to provide punishment for abuse and assault of children through child trafficking for different purposes such as labour, sale of body parts, organs, adoption, sexual offences of pedophilia, child prostitution, child pornography and child sex tourism," he said. He even set out the need for having a rescue plan for children caught in prostitution and trade.
Though the Bench appreciated the report, it was not oblivious of the problems on the ground. "Our real problem is implementation. We do not lack material. The whole problem emanates from poverty. In a number of cases, you rescue these children and put them in remand homes. When their parents are informed they are not ready to take them back as they cannot afford them two square meals or because of the social stigma." it said.
"You must have adequate remand homes with infrastructure and proper hygiene conditions. There must be a programme for sending these children to school and schools must be told to admit these children. You need to first chalk out this programme on priority basis," it suggested.
Appearing for petitioner NGO `Bachpan Bachao Andolan", senior advocate Colin Gonsalves said the government for years have been sitting on an NHRC report suggesting an alarming figure of 44,000 children reported missing annually of which only 11,000 get traced.
In this regard, the Bench asked Gonsalves along with several other NGOs like Prajwala, Sankalp and National Legal Services Authority to make suggestions within a week and present a comprehensive report. Advocate Aparna Bhatt representing NGO Prajwala informed the court that by involving NGOs in rehabilitation work, the victims of trafficking have benefited. As a model case, she cited Andhra Pradesh where victims of trafficking are given land. The matter was posted for hearing on January 22.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Child Rights forum at Vijaywada
THE HINDU
Date:10/01/2010 URL:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada
Cultural show marks Children’s Mela
Staff Reporter
Street children rehabilitated by voluntary bodies celebrate birth anniversary of Manihara
— PHOTO: RAJU. V
VIJAYAWADA: As many as 2,000 children, who were mostly street children rehabilitated by different voluntary organisations, gathered in Fr. Devaiah auditorium of Andhra Loyola College here on Saturday to participate in several events held during the day on the occasion of birth anniversary of N.S. Manihara, the founder of SKCV Children’s Trust.
The Children’s Mela-2010, as it was called, witnessed cultural performances and competitions in games and sports in sub-junior, junior and senior categories. Prizes were presented to the winners in each category.
Dance-drama
The day began with a dance-drama by the children of SKCV Home on the life of the late Manihara. They depicted how Manihara reached India and set up the organisation for the welfare of deprived children.
A few more skits on child labour were performed on the occasion.
Vijayawada Central MLA Malladi Vishnu, speaking as chief guest, underscored the need for more service organisations joining hands for the welfare of street children. He commended the Forum For Child Rights for brining all service organisations working for the children under one umbrella and providing help to the children in need.
Mayor M.V. Ratna Bindu, who presided over the meeting, recalled the services rendered by Manihara for the streetchildren. She said there was a need to eradicate child labour completely from the city and the support of every citizen was needed to achieve this task.
Police Commissioner (in-charge) Mahesh M. Bhagwat highlighted the importance of three ‘P’s – protection, prevention and prosecution – in implementation of child rights. He observed that trafficking in women and children was going on a large scale in Krishna and Godavari districts, as compared to other districts, but steps were being taken to protect every child.
Deputy Commissioner of Labour Yousuf Sheik, Forum treasurer B.S. Koteswara Rao, former treasurer of the TANA foundation K. Sambasiva Rao, Deputy Mayor S.P. Gritton and others were present.
Krishna district Collector Peeyush Kumar, who was the chief guest at the valedictory session, presented prizes to the winners of various competitions. Lauding the services of the non-governmental organisations, he assured support form the district administration for eradication of practice of child labour. General Manager of the Vijayawada Telecom District John Chrisostham, vice-president of the Forum for Child Rights N. Bhakti Manihara and others were present.
Date:10/01/2010 URL:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Andhra Pradesh - Vijayawada
Cultural show marks Children’s Mela
Staff Reporter
Street children rehabilitated by voluntary bodies celebrate birth anniversary of Manihara
— PHOTO: RAJU. V
VIJAYAWADA: As many as 2,000 children, who were mostly street children rehabilitated by different voluntary organisations, gathered in Fr. Devaiah auditorium of Andhra Loyola College here on Saturday to participate in several events held during the day on the occasion of birth anniversary of N.S. Manihara, the founder of SKCV Children’s Trust.
The Children’s Mela-2010, as it was called, witnessed cultural performances and competitions in games and sports in sub-junior, junior and senior categories. Prizes were presented to the winners in each category.
Dance-drama
The day began with a dance-drama by the children of SKCV Home on the life of the late Manihara. They depicted how Manihara reached India and set up the organisation for the welfare of deprived children.
A few more skits on child labour were performed on the occasion.
Vijayawada Central MLA Malladi Vishnu, speaking as chief guest, underscored the need for more service organisations joining hands for the welfare of street children. He commended the Forum For Child Rights for brining all service organisations working for the children under one umbrella and providing help to the children in need.
Mayor M.V. Ratna Bindu, who presided over the meeting, recalled the services rendered by Manihara for the streetchildren. She said there was a need to eradicate child labour completely from the city and the support of every citizen was needed to achieve this task.
Police Commissioner (in-charge) Mahesh M. Bhagwat highlighted the importance of three ‘P’s – protection, prevention and prosecution – in implementation of child rights. He observed that trafficking in women and children was going on a large scale in Krishna and Godavari districts, as compared to other districts, but steps were being taken to protect every child.
Deputy Commissioner of Labour Yousuf Sheik, Forum treasurer B.S. Koteswara Rao, former treasurer of the TANA foundation K. Sambasiva Rao, Deputy Mayor S.P. Gritton and others were present.
Krishna district Collector Peeyush Kumar, who was the chief guest at the valedictory session, presented prizes to the winners of various competitions. Lauding the services of the non-governmental organisations, he assured support form the district administration for eradication of practice of child labour. General Manager of the Vijayawada Telecom District John Chrisostham, vice-president of the Forum for Child Rights N. Bhakti Manihara and others were present.
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