Read more at The Press Trust of India…

Prostitution racket run by ’spiritual’ centre busted

Delhi Police today claimed to have busted a prostitution racket being run at a ’spiritual’ centre with the arrest of two alleged pimps and six women, including two air-hostesses.

One of the arrested persons had set up a ‘temple’ in south Delhi’s Khanpur, police said.

Six women were arrested, including two air-hostesses, one an MBA student and an aspiring Bollywood actress.

The racket was unearthed yesterday after police received inputs about the pimps and sex workers who were to come to PVR Saket. A Sub-Inspector was sent as a decoy customer and after a deal was struck, police swooped down and arrested them.

Some escorts had their wings clipped in India.  NewKerala.com reports…

Prostitution racket of aspiring models busted in Delhi

A prostitution racket involving aspiring models and actresses was busted in south Delhi, the police said Friday.

“The gang’s kingpin was arrested along with four sex workers and ten pimps on the basis of secret information from PVR Saket market area,” a police official said.

“On interrogation, she said that she was married to a criminal who was killed in a shootout. She told us that since she was habitual of living a lavish life, she entered the business of flesh trade,” the official added.

“Initially, she started the flesh trade alone and later on she formed a group of aspiring models and actresses. She hired a large number of pimps for transportation and logistics.

“She used to source aspiring models and sex workers from different states. Even her clientele was from different states,” the official said.

You have to love an opinion piece that starts with the news flash ‘Prostitution is a fact and its existence is a reality.’ Nothing new here – just the same arguments that always get made to advance the decriminalization agenda.  Read the whole article at Merinews.com…

Prostitution: An unreal reality
Prostitution is a fact and its existence is a reality. Though, prostitutes are sex workers, but they are not protected under labour laws. They are not entitled to minimum wage benefits, compensation for injury or other benefits like medical, PF.

IMAGINE, THE company you are working with does not give you any medical allowance and provident fund (PF). You are not entitled to any compensation in case of any injury or termination. Also, in case of misbehaviour or harassment, you can’t file police complaint. How would you feel? Angry or may be frustrated. Did you know millions of sex workers in India are living and working in conditions much worse than the ones mentioned above? Our ignorance is due to our unwillingness to know and face the fact. Prostitution is a fact; its existence is a reality. But, we don’t want to see it, for us it is as real as the roundness of earth. Although, we know earth is round but we can see only flat surface.

In India, approximately two million female sex workers are operating (this number does not include male sex workers). The Immoral Traffic Persons (Prevention) Act or PITA was passed in 1956 to curb prostitution and gradually abolish it by criminalising its various facets. The ambiguity in the law is visible, since it does not make prostitution a crime, but forbids sex workers from publicly pursuing customers. They can’t practice their trade within 200 yards of a public place.

Due to the muddled nature of law; prostitution in India is neither legal nor illegal. Though, prostitutes are sex workers, but unlike other workers they are not protected under labour laws. They are not entitled to minimum wage benefits, compensation for injury or other benefits like; medical, PF. However, they have the right to rescue and rehabilitate (if they desire) and enjoy all the rights that other citizens of India have (only in theory, but in practice things are different). Sex workers are often charged with crimes of imprecise names such as ’public indecency or nuisance’.

Recently, there has been demand for legalising prostitution. According to the advocates of legalisation; Legalising prostitution will help minimise the negative impact of such an activity on society and the vulnerable members in the community. Legalising it will bring in government regulation; this will create a secure environment, for both sex workers and consumers.

In a regulated environment, issues like health and hygienen and compensation will be dealt appropriately. Also, regulation and control will help eradicate child prostitution.

An interesting look at the type of escort who specializes in the elite-level client.  Reuters reports…

New breed of elite prostitutes cater to India’s rich
By Melanie Lee

Zeba, a 23-year-old model and actress says she’s found the perfect job. The money is great, she rubs shoulders with the super rich and her working hours are convenient.

Zeba is one of thousands of high-price call girls servicing India’s nouveau riche and the throng of foreign businessmen drawn to a booming economy.

“If you have a modelling assignment, you have to work hard,” Zeba, who declined to give her full name in order to protect her identity, said in American-accented English.

“But over here, it’s just one hour. You talk to the person for half-an-hour and then the other half-an-hour in bed. You make a lot of money and it’s easy,” added Zeba, who charges 200,000 Indian rupees ($4,600 US) for an hour’s encounter, of which the escort agency keeps half.

Prostitution is illegal in India. Yet voluntary groups estimate there to be two million sex workers, most of them forced into the trade by crushing poverty. Many suffer from HIV in a country with the world’s third highest HIV caseload.

Call girls such as Zeba live in a world far removed from New Delhi’s infamous G.B. Road, its main red-light district, and work as prostitutes as a matter of choice, plying their trade in five star hotels rather than on the streets or in brothels.

Many high-price escorts such as Zeba are educated women from middle-class families who see prostitution as a lucrative and even glamorous profession.

“Only two to three percent of India’s prostitutes enter the profession willingly. These are the high-class girls, and it is them exercising their democratic rights,” said Ranjana Kumari, director of the Centre for Social Research in New Delhi.

“These high-class escorts are definitely an outcome of globalised India,” added Kumari.

The growth of high-end prostitution in India underscores not only the affluence among the upper-classes who have the money to hire such prostitutes, but also the changing role of women in a deeply conservative society.

Even today, Indian women are expected to cover up in public and conform to strict societal norms. Premarital sex is taboo and Bollywood movies tease but generally stop short of kissing.

Yet the country’s newfound economic affluence and expanding middle-class has also brought an insatiable appetite for the good things in life from designer clothes, to fast cars, to champagne dinners.

“With the changes in the economy and increased consumerism, the Indian woman is under pressure to conform to a highly capitalistic image which requires a lot of money to upkeep,” said Anuja Agrawal, a sociologist at the University of Delhi.

“If Indian society were to really allow their women to be free, they won’t be forced to conform to such a rigid behaviour.”

Continue reading ‘New breed of elite prostitutes cater to India’s rich’ »

A brief look at the sex tourism industry as it relates to India.  IBN reports…

Sex tourism, Incredible India’s dark side
Sumit Pande / CNN-IBN

New Delhi: The tourism industry has earned $12 billion as foreign exchange for the country, but its growth in India is also making skeptics sit up and take a close look at its darker side – sex tourism. In fact the Ministry of Women and Child Development has commissioned a study on sex tourism in India.

Taking a serious note of the rise in sex tourism in the country, the Government is looking into some of the cases in the recent past like two British nationals, Duncan Grant and Allan Waters, who face charges of paedophilia.

Another state government report in Andhra Pradesh revealed an increase in HIV cases near the holy town of Tirupati. So a study is being conducted to find out how the growth in the tourism industry is also fuelling prostitution in the country.

The study was commissioned to a non-government organisation (NGO) but it was kept under wraps since the issue was sensitive.

The study, which is being conducted by Gram Niyojan Kendra, covers more than 18 states in various tourist centres, including religious sites. The elaborate study also includes interviews of over 1,000 victims of sex trade at various tourist spots.

“It’s a very important study. One has to study the effect of a fledging industry in the country,” Director of Centre for Social Research Ranjana Kumari said.

The initial data trickling in indicates that the problem is within the country – domestic tourists rather than the foreign ones are fuelling sex trade in India.

The final report is slated to be out by November this year, which could very well help policy makers regulate and channelise an industry which is the country’s top foreign earner after information technology.