Couples held in 'travelling sex trade' racket by Bengaluru Police

Bengaluru: Bengaluru city police have cracked down on a “travelling community” of married couples engaged in sex work, following the arrest of two such couples in Pulakeshinagar in Bengaluru last week.

The community operated in what the police called a ring of “movement prostitution” or “trip prostitution” – the couples travelled to different cities and networked through social media platforms to find their customers. The police estimate that there could be more than 100 such couples in the ring, known and unknown to each other.

The arrests in Pulakeshinagar came following a complaint of attempted extortion against one of the two men.

The couples, who are now out on bail, live in Delhi and are originally from Ahmedabad and Haryana. One of the couples – husband aged 38 and wife, 35 – has been involved in the trade for eight years.
The other couple is a 36-year-old man and his wife, aged 32; they have been part of the community for three years. Both the couples have
children.

A police official told DH that these couples are members of groups created on social media platforms – including Reddit and Telegram – and the groups include both the traveling couples and their customers. “These groups also consist of gay men, lesbians and people with specific sexual preferences,” the official said.

Travelling couples in the community, typically, take a tour to a city before which they post details of their trip in the groups.

Interested customers in the city contact the couple through direct messages and the couple reply to them with the available slots, for the customers to pay and reserve.

The customers arrange for the couples’ travel, make the hotel reservation – only five star and above – and meet them at the location. The couples stay in a city for two or three days and do not return to the city for months.

The police said the business was well established and in the event of an arrest, the couples had lawyers ready to bail them out. An investigating officer said the couples’ lawyers were in Bengaluru soon after their arrest. He said getting the couples to speak was tough but the arrested men and women gave in soon. “While one couple agreed to leave sex work, the other refused and said this was all they knew,” he said.

The couples were booked under Section 383 of the IPC (extortion) and the Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act. The officer, however, cited limitations in taking the case forward under provisions of the Act since the couples’ exchanges were consensual.

How were they caught?

It was a drunk phone call by the arrested 38-year-old man that led to the unearthing of the community. One of the couples was staying in a Bengaluru hotel last week. The husband, frustrated about not finding customers, got drunk and sent a morphed picture of a man to an unconnected person’s number.

Later, he called the person and demanded money for not sharing the image on social media. The person who got the call filed a police complaint. “We had no idea about the second couple who were in the next room. After we arrested the first couple, the hotel authorities said there were two more people in the next room who knew the arrested couple,” the officer said.