How tech is driving trafficking in women

Link sent by Pranab Ji, Times of India ,Patna

PUNE: Mobile phone-cameras, handycams and sedative-laced drinks are beginning to give rise to a new form of trafficking in women in different parts of the country. From Kashmir to the small taluka township of Bhor in Pune district, about a dozen cases have surfaced in which unsuspecting women were filmed in sexual encounters. The video clips were then either sold, circulated or used to blackmail them into repeated rapes by different men. As had happened in the recent Srinagar sex abuse case, at Bhor and in the neighbouring Ahmednagar district, two minors and two other women were sexually exploited by a ring of men. What is shockingly similar in both the cases are allegations that the victims were drugged, filmed and then blackmailed into sexual exploitation.

In most cases, the women suffered silently out of fear that the scam, if exposed, could destroy their own future and that of their families. "The misuse of mobile phone cameras and handycams to sexually exploit women has been rising steadily and we NGOs feel that this has led to a technology-driven trafficking in women," Stree Adhar Kendra president Neelam Gorhe, MLC, told TOI on Thursday. In the Bhor case, which surfaced on Wednesday, a 22-year-old woman was taken to a lodge by an acquaintance on the pretext of being introduced to some influential people who could help her get a government job. There, she was allegedly sedated through a laced drink, sexually exploited and filmed. While this happened in January, the sordid saga of blackmailing and repeated rape continued over the next fourfive months till the racket was busted by the Pune police and nine men were arrested. In Ahmednagar, the CID arrested 12 men in connection with the chainrape of two minor girls from poor families.

That case was brought to light by Ahmednagar NGOs Childline and Snehalaya after they pursued a "missing" complaint lodged by the parents. "Our investigations led to people who were known in the Ahmednagar redlight area as traffickers in women. In this case too, some form of filming was done to trap the girls and keep them quiet," Snehalaya's honorary director, Girish Kulkarni, told TOI. Two months ago, in Aurangabad, two youths were arrested and charged with filming and circulating an oral sex MMS featuring their female classmate. The traumatised girl from the northeast was forced to discontinue her studies and rush back home. Last year, Pune was rocked when secret webcams were discovered in rented rooms occupied by college girls. In 2003, a web camera was found in the women's changing room in a public swimming pool.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1526709.cms