Team Herald
PANJIM: A dedicated call centre to handle customers. A website with the look and feel of an online shopping experience. Advance payment before services were provided. These are some of the hi-tech features of an online prostitution ring that has been busted by the Cyber Cell of the Goa Police.
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While the website’s Hyderabad-based proprietor Sayyed Usman, aged around 60 from Madanapalle, Andhra Pradesh, and his partner-in-crime Mohammed Mujibullah (30) from Tripura, have been arrested, their BPO team, consisting of techies and call centre staffers, who actually ran the ‘Safewalkgoa.com’ website, have all gone underground, prompting a hunt for at least five men and two women. Police are in hot pursuit of two other top accomplices of Usman, who are residing in a slum area at Ribandar.
Ironically, the call centre for call girls was being run allegedly in rental rooms owned by the wife of a police constable at Tivai Vaddo in Calangute, said police sources close to O Heraldo.
The rooms have been vacated and emptied overnight, added the sources, implying that the BPO team had been tipped off about the arrest of their employer in Hyderabad. The Police said they are on the lookout for Arush Bhai, Rahul and Simran, who ran the operation, and Arush, Sumit, Punam, Kevin and Rohit, who were part of the team.
The racket came to light last week, after a disgruntled customer filed a complaint with the Cyber Cell that he was taken for a ride.
While the Cyber Cell claims to have taken the website down last week, the url ‘ www.safewalkgoa.com ’ now immediately redirects to a similar website, www.vipescortingoa.com, which offers the services of ‘supermodels, Russians and TV actors’ with an interface allowing clients to pick women off a online shopping-style menu – exposing the Medusa-like nature of the business. Most of the victims are minors and hail from Andhra Pradesh, Mumbai and West Bengal.
Besides, there were 15 Russian call girls and 10 Russian gigolos offering services on the site. Police revealed that once the client contacted Simran and Rahul on WhatsApp, the deal was struck and the client was directed to proceed to a hotel room number given by the duo. Initially, part payment was made online and the rest of it was made on the basis of sex services provided. Often in certain cases, some gullible clients were also taken for a ride, beaten up, cheated and thrown out the hotel rooms.
The police began a crackdown on websites advertising escort services in Goa last week, after South Goa MP Capt Viriato Fernandes and Leader of the Oppostion Yuri Alemao remarked that Goa has become the capital of rape, murder, drugs and prostitution, inviting ‘third-class tourists’.
Capt Viriato said the State has gone down Thailand’s sex tourism route, and alleged that the government was not cracking the whip as MLAs are probably benefiting from the sex trade.
Sources in the police said that the accused have been flown from Andhra and Tripura.
This prompted Chief Minister Pramod Sawant to assure a crackdown on sex trade websites, leading to the arrest of Usman in Hyderabad, in whose name the website safewalkgoa.com was registered. However, sources say Usman is an elderly man, who is not tech-savvy, had outsourced the entire operation to the team in Goa, which numbered upto 15 people. The Goa Police remain tight-lipped about the entire investigation – understandably so, since one of their own, had allegedly rented out rooms on his property for the back-end of the operation.
Sources revealed that the cyber cell is investigating the chat messages of the police constable and other big wigs involved in the scam.
