Hyderabad: Sex racketeers are using classified advertisement websites, blogs, and independent websites to carry on their business in the city. A customer just needs to run a search in Google with keywords like ‘escort services in Hyderabad’ or ‘call girls in Hyderabad.’ He will get stunned seeing the number of pages with contact numbers appearing.
Call one of the numbers and an agent will answer. He will sent the girl or invite customers to the several “pick up points” in the city after confirming the whereabouts of the client. Before clinching the deal, the agent will even send photos of the women via Whatsapp.
The West Zone police busted four rackets using phone numbers collected from these Websites in just a month. “We booked eight cases and busted four sex rackets by tracking contact numbers from classified websites like Locanto. We found that most of the escort services are provided by gangs. There are active agents on the ground to take customers to brothels or take women to whichever place the client wants,” said west zone DCP V. Satyanarayana.
Classified websites like Craigslist, Vivastreet, Locanto, Backpage, etc and websites like www.escortshyderabad.in and hundreds of blogs are active with photos of sex workers and contact numbers. However, city police officials say that owners of the phone numbers are often dead people as the SIM cards were purchased with fake identity cards.
“The agents use fake identity cards of dead people to buy SIM cards. They also keep changing the numbers to escape the police,” cops said.
The gangs use professional methods to deal with clients. Once a client contacts on the phone numbers available online, the agent would confirm if the customer is genuine. He would ask which hotel or lodge the customer is staying, and then he would call up the hotel reception to check if the person has actually checked in. After confirming he would call again, and will give details of the woman and payment.
The agent either sends photos of the girl through Whatsapp or gives URLs of blogs containing the photographs, police officials said.
A large number of sex workers provided by the gangs are from Kolkata and Mumbai. “The gangs bring them for a week or 10 days to the city. They also bring women from neighbouring districts,” the West Zone DCP said.
2 hotel staffers arrested, four sex workers rescued
The police busted a sex racket at a luxury hotel in Banjara Hills on Saturday. Police arrested a managerial staffer of the hotel and a room boy, and rescued four women sex workers, including three models from Kolkata. Police said the girls were brought for three customers from Hyder-abad.
A police team raided the Casa Luxurio Hotel, Green Valley, Banjara Hills, and found the sex workers. The manager, Mr Indra Pal Singh was found to have provided the girls to customers.
The sex workers were sent to rescue homes and the arrested men were produced before court.
