The new white flesh trade

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The new white flesh trade

Mihir Srivastava,India Today, January 21, 2010

Lola, 22, is a tall girl with high, thin eyebrows on a slender face.

Her features are sharp but her eyes are uninterested, fixed at a painting on the

wall of the coffee shop, as she tries hard to explain, in broken English, why

she is in India.

Clad in a too-tight pink sweatshirt, faded cream shorts and shiny red boots, her

right hand bearing a cocktail ring which she keeps twisting nervously, her blue

nail varnish chipped, she seems a far cry from her alluring nocturnal avatar as

one of the Capital's high-priced prostitutes.

She speaks of how she came to work here two-and-a-half months ago. Her boyfriend

TC, not Tom Cruise, she clarifies, momentarily showing signs of life, joined her

last month. Both are clear about what they want from their lives--enough money

to buy a house in Tashkent, their hometown in Uzbekistan.

One of five siblings who grew up in poverty, Lola's mother is dead and her

father was abusive. For her it's just another job. There are no regrets. " It was

TC who did all the running around for me, got my papers done and put me on a

flight to Delhi, " she says.

Lola is not alone. She is part of a growing army of fair-skinned prostitutes,

about 3,000 of them in the Capital and about the same number in the other parts

of the country. They are from Ukraine, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan,

Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan, all of which are part of the Commonwealth

of Independent States (CIS).

Replacing the earlier favourites, imports from Nepal, and charging 40 per cent

more than Indian prostitutes, they are changing the rules of the game, feeding

on the Indian fascination for white skin and the greater openness with which

they can promote their sexual favours, through classified advertisements in

newspapers and professionally-designed websites.

That the fascination for white skin is transnational is evident from the string

of recent arrests. Last year, on December 10, a Delhi-based hotel manager,

Shanker Mishra, was arrested in Rajkot along with an Uzbek prostitute in her

late 20s, Ragini, a native of Tashkent. Initial investigations revealed that

Mishra would provide women to cash-rich traders and garment exporters in Rajkot,

Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and Indore.

A little earlier, on October 30, another sex racket was busted in Mahipalpur,

Delhi, where three women of CIS origin, Aslefya, 23, Sonya, 25, and Roma, 27,

were arrested following a scuffle between a few pimps and locals in front of a

guesthouse, 365 Inn.

In July, the Crime Branch of the Delhi Police arrested two CIS prostitutes when

a decoy customer was sent to strike a deal with them. The pimp, Goldy, came with

the two foreign women in a car. They were here on a six-month tourist visa and

had been in the Gulf before coming to India; with their stay here governed by a

Rs 1.5 lakh contract for each girl for one month. The women will be deported

soon.

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