How I committed a crime in 3 minutes and no one knew.
The phone rang, “Where are you?”, were his first words to me. Once I told him my location. He then went on to ask,”accommodation is where?”. “Home”, I replied and that’s it. I was verified. He didn’t bother to know whether I was a minor or a 70-year-old man, whether I had HIV or not. After all, he was not the one to be traded here. So why’d he bother? I am talking about Mr Kishan, who successfully runs an e-commerce website online. In the age of Flipkart and Amazon already sharing a huge market capital. Mr Kishan’s business is unique and thriving. Studied from Godknowswhere, his entrepreneurial set of skills can easily turn anything he touches into gold. Like an entrepreneur, he takes the goods of others, uses a land of someone else and collects his revenue from both ends. What he sells online is also unique. He sells girls, sorry, women, sorry, I could not verify their age as they tend to change with the cash you put on the table. He then asked me for an advance of 2k to be transferred through Paytm and a hotel booking slip. It seems that home service is not an option in his venture as it has some complications. So now you know, how to buy from this new e-commerce. Now, on a serious note, don’t you think it should be illegal. In India, prostitution as a “whole” is not illegal. Soliciting in public, running a brothel, is illegal because of Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956. But, according to this law, a public place is defined as a place accessible to anyone at any time. Whereas in this case, the website is only accessible to the person either looking for the service online or already has the site’s address. One question that I had in mind was why doesn’t google stop showing such search results. It does if the safe search option is checked on your google account otherwise it doesn’t. It may, therefore, be difficult to consider such website a “public place” as defined under the Act. Then comes the Indecent Representation of Women Act, 1986. Any publication which portrays women in a scatological, unchaste or crude manner is punishable under law. Similarly, under section 67A of the IT Act criminalizes such publications. In my particular case, There was such content present on the escort’s website. Which should be enough to block the website. Believe it or not. We live in a society that burns houses down over a movie. But have failed to address the real evil of our society. How can a culture thrive if it doesn’t provide equality to all? Even while you are reading this some minor is on a stranger’s bed getting ripped off, of her innocence which will haunt her whole life. Whose mistake is this? No one. We cannot blame it on anyone. Unless we ourselves know the preciousness of one’s life, one’s soul. We cannot fathom the error on our side and people like Kishan will continue to work and ruin lives. PS: I promised a video of this post. But the Centre for Internet and Society could not give an interview.