Exactly a year ago, in September last year, newspapers and TV media were buzzing with the startling facts that Goa tops the country in human trafficking cases per capita population. In 2021, Goa reported 15 cases of human trafficking and rescued 35 victims, all Indian citizens. Experts believe that the current numbers are just the tip of the iceberg and due to the lack of continued police action to rescue and prosecute the traffickers and clients, the trafficking scenario in the State is worsening by the day.
Anyay Rahit Zindagi (ARZ), an NGO involved in the rescue and rehabilitation of human trafficking victims, and who was instrumental in Friday’s crackdown, believes that girls from across the country are lured with better employment opportunities at casinos, dance bars, hotels, etc, and forced into the sex trade. While the number of females falling prey to such instances post Covid-19 has multiplied many fold, the crackdown and rescue efforts have not kept pace with the flourishing illegal flesh trade.
In May 2017, O Heraldo exposed how Twitter (now X) handles had been created and were offering services of girls for escort purposes in different parts of Goa. The Cyber Crime Cell of Goa Police had taken cognisance of the report exposing the new modus operandi adopted to carry out the prostitution trade across the State. Later that year, in August, the Goa Women’s Forum, an NGO, called upon the North Goa Superintendent of Police demanding action against the escort service websites that have been tarnishing Goa’s image labeling it as a sex tourism destination. The delegation submitted a detailed memorandum pointing out that the situation had reached such proportions that the websites are selling sex services by offering college girls and housewives, and have not even spared religious places.
Therefore, the question arises that if the NGOs, the media as well and the public are aware of the existence of such websites and the use of social networking multimedia platforms, then how come the Police Department, in spite of all the resources at its disposal, feigns ignorance? The website ‘massage republic’, is actively promoting sex services without the garb of escort services and publishes mobile phone numbers to contact the females, and yet our law enforcement agencies are unable to crackdown on neither the websites nor the people behind the organised illegal sex trade.
It is a blow to the Cyber Crime Cell which is expected to keep a vigil against such online platforms. Questions also arise on the functioning of the Anti-Trafficking unit of Goa Police. More than often it is the local police stations that are cracking down upon the illegal prostitution rackets, whereas the anti-trafficking unit was instituted with the specific responsibility to curb commercial sexual exploitation. The local intelligence bureau should have been the first to have knowledge of any suspicious movements and apprehend the solicitors as well as the clients, but the opposite is true.
Friday’s crackdown has thrown up yet another failure of the enforcement agency, – the Foreigners Regional Registration Officer (FRRO). It has been lackadaisical in its work, otherwise how does one defend that a foreign national in her twenties has lived in the State for five years without a valid passport and a visa? That points fingers at the working of the police department as a whole and the alleged nexus between the pimps and the cops.
The two women arrested in Friday’s crackdown are just pawns of the larger network that has been running the illegal commercial sexual exploitation of Indians as well as foreign nationals. Goa Police can keep thumping its chest for making a tiny hole in the large ring of pimps, but the truth is that it has failed to deter the ongoing illegalities at every step. It was the intervention of an NGO that saved the lives of five Kenyan girls and not a police operation by itself.
Therefore, the Chief Minister and the Director General of Goa Police have to answer to Goans on the steps being taken to strengthen the vigil against the illegal sex trade that continues to flourish in the State and the action being taken against the officials for dereliction of duty. Every passing day is adding victims to the vicious world of sexual exploitation.
