FRIDAY, MAY 03, 2024
Team Herald
PANJIM: The Anjuna Police on Friday busted an international sex trafficking ring operating between Kenya and India and arrested two Kenyans. The police also rescued five victims from Kenya.
A Nigerian national who is involved in the racket is absconding. The rescued women have been lodged in Protective Home at Merces.
The police gave the names of the accused as Maria Dorcas alias Israelite, 28 and Wilkista Achista, 22, both natives of Kenya. A case has been registered against them under Sections, 370, 370 (A) and 370 (3) read with 34 IPC and Sections 4, 5 and 8 of Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956.
According to North SP Nidhin Valsan, the victims were brought to Goa and forced into massage parlour and subsequently into flesh trade and supplied to African men. They were living in miserable conditions and their passports were taken away by the accused. They were not allowed to go out and were virtually forced into flesh trade.
This racket was being operated from two guest houses in Anjuna and Siolim. Police have also initiated action against these guest house owners.
The racket was busted with the collaborative efforts of the Anjuna police led by Mapusa SDPO Jivba Dalvi and NGO ARZ from Vasco.
Young, educated, and vulnerable Kenyan women were falsely promised jobs in the hospitality industry by agents working on behalf of traffickers based in Goa. After being brought to India, the traffickers seized the women's passports and visas, forcing them into prostitution under threat of violence and imposing a debt of Rs 5 to Rs 8 lakh.
The racket, a close-knit group involving the trafficker duo Maria Dorcas and Wilkista, operated largely online, leveraging escort websites to solicit clients. ARZ NGO became aware of the operation when the victims were taken to Bengaluru for prostitution. However, one of the victims escaped from the clutches of the traffickers. Hapless and homeless without a passport and no money in hand, she contacted ARZ through a Good Samaritan and that is the time the NGO got alerted and contacted the police.
Following a tip-off from a partner organisation, ARZ successfully located the victims in Goa and facilitated a meeting with the police to share the information.
Goa becomes transit route for sex tourism
PANJIM: With the arrest of kingpins behind the sex racket, Goa has not only become a global destination for sex tourism but it has become a transit route too.
The way women are trafficked for sex from different countries to India, speaks volumes of the nefarious trade flourishing in the coastal State.
Surprisingly, the website ‘Massage Republic’, which offered sex services, went unnoticed by the Cyber Crime Cell, FRRO, Anti-Trafficking Unit and the Goa Police at large.
It is reportedly learnt that the main accused Maria Dorcas operated in Goa and lived in the State for last five years without a valid passport and visa.
But she used to produce any of the victims’ passport to the police, as she had similar features, thus making it difficult for the cops to recognise.
Sources also revealed that she would charge Rs 5,000 to a prospective customer everytime she provided them with a woman. She moved victims from guest houses located at Marna-Siolim and Anjuna.
Locals in the area say that the police of late have been conducting tenant verification drives, rounding up migrants and uploading their photographs on social media. They now wonder how the police could not unearth such a sex racket, when they had local intelligence bureau and the Crime Branch, who otherwise sniff out illegalities.
Another villager alleged that the accused was well connected and definitely “shared her ill-gotten money with the men in uniform”. “The trade is illegal and to run such rackets you have to grease the palms of law enforcing agencies so that it runs smoothly,” he said.
