We caught up with an online Romeo who spends half a life trawling mobile phones and the internet for romance. He offered a glimpse of his modus operandi which is based on gaining the confidence of his targets.
“Dialogues” are all-important, he says. The strange path of his “love” proceeds through sympathy, promises, temptation and blackmailing. Girls seeking a one-night stand or forced to do so end up in the clutches of a bigger racket. It is only a matter of time before a helping hand turns that of an exploiter.
“I came to Kochi from a remote village in Kannur 10 years ago. Now I am very much a product of this city as any other. This happens to almost everyone who comes to the city from small villages. They turn fashionable overnight. Girls who were not allowed to wear a churidar with long slits at their native villages feel unlimited freedom in the city."
The youngster claimed he has a lot of girlfriends and described how he goes about looking for more.
“There is a ladies’ hostel around here. The warden would let out five or six girls every day. They would return around midnight with wads of cash in their hands. The warden would get a decent tip. These girls are not looking for sex. They are looking for money, mobile phones and ganja. Even I have invited many of them.
“Mobile phones are a good bridge between us. Like, my friend would say, there’s a nice girl. Here is her photo and here is her number. I would call her. She would ask me who gave me her number. I cannot say that though. That would be a breach of trust. She would cut the call. I would send a good morning or a smiley on her WhatsApp.
“Ultimately, she would run low on balance in her mobile phone. Then she would try her contacts, including the friend who gave me her number. If none of them is available, she would ring me. She would start with the same question, ‘who gave my number?’, and proceed to other things. By then her balance would run out. I would offer to recharge for Rs 200. You have to spend at least that much for them to stick around. Then a few rounds of recharges and chats would follow.
“Many girls have come with me to my room. I have taken videos of them. But I do not forward those to others. WhatsApp is a pitfall for the girls. My girlfriend landed in trouble after she posed in a night dress for her profile picture.
“My advice to girls is to destroy their Android sets if they conk. Do not give the set anywhere to mend it. Even deleted photos can be retrieved. It is nothing but trouble. And put up only general pictures like a flower or something as your profile picture. Never give your picture. It is better if you do not encourage strangers calling on your phone. Parents should also track if their daughters sent to a city for studies come back with enough money on them.”
Business as usual
When Manu Mahesh, an accused in the online sex racket, was brought to a gang of girls who were caught later, he became strangely emotional. The Karamana native was disturbed by the sight of one of the girls. He said he introduced her to this field, claiming that she was doing fine when she was with him.
When the investigating officer asked him jovially about the future of his “business”, he said confidently that all these were part of it.
Online pimps carefully go through the obit pages and accident reports on newspapers. They are trained to identify girls left orphaned or insecure. Details on any potential victims are passed on to the lover boys who then employ a series of tactics to get them into sex trade. They also track women neck deep in debt. Any help would lead to demands for sexual favours later. Another soft target is women who are unsatisfied in their marriages. School and college students also land up in the racket’s net with their naïve understanding of love.
The police say the number of Facebook and WhatsApp Romeos is increasing day by day. They can have an affair with many women at the same time. Such youngsters are used by racketeers to expand their trade. This was how a polytechnic student from Adoor landed in police custody in Kottarakkara. His phone number was put up on a website run by online racketeers.
There is a particular variety of youngsters who sponge on middle-aged women. They would meet them online and develop an affair with them. Once they manage to get them laid, the equations change. The women are asked for money. The initial requests soon change to intimidating demands bordering on blackmail.
Road to exploitation
Four testimonies that throw some light on the methods used by ruthless racketeers online to trap unsuspecting girls and older women.
Harassed by an unknown WhatsApp user who sends pornographic pictures and obscene messages to her phone and calls her in the middle of the night, a housewife approached the police. The police tracked down the offender, who said he got his victim’s number from a WhatsApp group where someone had shared a list of women who do not mind late-night calls and chats. The investigation led to the woman’s neighbour who added her number to the list to settle scores with her. Even the other women whose numbers were featured on the list revealed similar stories of harassment.
A middle-aged woman got a friend request from a stranger in the Gulf on her Facebook account after she appeared on a television programme. They became friends and the inevitable chats followed. The “friend” eventually invited her to a business party after she said she was interested in acting in movies. She was told she could chat up celebrities in such parties. She was even paid a fee for being at the party. During the party, the “friend” accosted the woman and demanded that she come to his room. The fee paid to her includes such services, he said. That was not the end though. The pictures taken at the party were used to blackmail her into more such encounters, until she recorded a call and warned him of a police complaint.
A girl in the eighth standard in a prominent school in south Kerala once bunked classes to go to a juice shop. Two students shot a picture of her at the shop and approached her the next day with a threat to show it to the principal unless she accompanied them to a coffee shop. The scared girl obliged them but the boys shot more pictures of her along with them in the café. Next, she was accosted by another group of men, who threatened to show the latest pictures to her parents. The hapless 13-year-old obliged them too, and ended up being abused by 20 men. The girl and her shattered family now lead a reclusive life.
A cine worker from Venjaramoodu says abusers come in any guise. “I value individual freedom,” she said, adding that she was part of the Kiss of Love protest and a Facebook group that promotes free thought. Rahul Pasupalan, an active member of the group, would post in favour of women and women’s freedom. If any girl “liked” those posts or commented on them, Pasupalan would follow it up with a personal chat. He would persuade them that the most important freedom was that of the body. He is learnt to have introduced many girls into sex racket by using these methods.
Lock your mobile
Every mobile phone is a storehouse of personal data and confidential information. New-age thieves are eyeing the photos, videos and messages on your phone, especially when the devices are sent for repairing. There are a few simple precautionary measures you can take to ensure that personal data is not stolen even when your device is lost or sent for repair.
You can lock your phone digitally. Go to settings, and look for ‘Lock screen’. You can lock screen in three ways. Use a password which no one else knows. Do not settle for easy-to-guess passwords like your name or 1234. A strong password should be a combination of letters, numbers and special characters. Something like PC#2011%iSlaND, for instance.
You can also use a PIN. But take care not to use your mobile number itself. Date of birth or house number will also give you away easily. The screen can also be locked using a pattern you have preset.
In case someone still tries to unlock your device, they can be tracked by applications which click their picture and sends it your email or Dropbox. Applications such as Lockwatch and Hidden Eye can be installed free on your phone. They use the phone’s front camera to click a picture of the person trying to break in and alert the owner by sharing the picture of the intruder.
If the intruder finds his way into the mobile phone, there are other locking systems to protect data. App Lock and similar apps give you an option to protect locations such as Gallery, My Files, messages and apps like WhatsApp by setting up a password. Smart App Lock, Gallery Hider, App Locker Master and App Locker can be downloaded from either Google Playstore or Windows Store.
In case of Apple devices running on iOS, users can go to ‘General’ within settings and select ‘Restrictions’. If you click on ‘Enable Restrictions’ you can password-protect each applications within the phone.
If you want better security, most Android devices offer options such as ‘Encrypt device’ and ‘Encrypt external SD’. You can activate them by following the directions. If you have activated the ‘Remote controls’ option within settings, you can lock your phone even after someone has stolen your phone. You can even wipe out the data remotely.
(Reporting by Sandhya Grace, K Rekha, Remya Binoy, Gayathri Muraleedharan, Neetha Naveen, Gayathri Jayaraj, T S Divya, Anu Mary Jacob, Sreedevi Nambiar, K P Safeena, Juny Joseph, K Sreerekha, Ansu Anna Baby, Ria Joy, Linu Mol Chacko, Ninny Mary Baby and Shahala Kunjumuhammed)
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