From:  "vgd1967" <vgd1967@indiatimes.com>
Date:  Thu Jul 15, 2004  10:59 pm
Subject:  The Entrapment Meeting - 1

This mail is about the meeting that took place at the Humsafar Drop-In Centre
last Sunday, 11/7, on the growing problem of entrapment of queer people for
profit.

Anyone who's been part of the community for a while knows what a serious problem
this is - and also how peculiarly hard it is to do anything about it. Having
this meeting didn't change things - and I don't think anyone was expecting it
would - but at least it gave us a chance to discuss the subject and see what, if
anything, were our options in tackling it. We know that talking may not result
in solutions - but we also know that not talking definitely won't.

I'd first like to thank Nitin for readily agreeing to have this discussion at
one of the Centre's Sunday High meets, and also to everyone who landed up there
on a Sunday evening. We started off just by sharing stories and looking at all
the different ways in which entrapment happens. Broadly, I think you could
classify them like this (but please, this mail is also meant to stimulate
discussion and get more stories, so if you have anything to add, write in):

(Brief note: by hustler here I mean someone who entraps gay guys, usually by
luring them for sex, which he may or may not indicate is to be paid for. I
acknowledge that there are many honest hustlers who are doing sex work for pay
without trying to take advantage of the situation, and this discussion does not
relate to them. The issue here is the entrapment, not the sex work).

1) The hustler who lures you on and then, often without anything happening, just
turns on you and threatens you because you're gay. Says what you're doing is
wrong and demands or just takes your money.

2) The hustler who's part of a gang. He lures you to an apparently safe place
and when you're there the gang members converge and either just mug you and take
your valuables, or threaten you because you're gay. They may threaten to take
you to the police unless you hand over your money. (Sometimes they claim the guy
who lures you is also doing wrong things - and that you made him do it.
Otherwise the guy takes the lead in threatening you). A prime place for this is
Churchgate station and the place they take you is those B,C and D roads that
lead from the station to Marine Drive.

3) The hustler who follows you home or to work. Sometimes its after a genuine
sexual encounter, sometimes after an encounter like the one above. They threaten
to out you or report you and try to blackmail you over time. And they often
succeed - one person we know paid out over Rs1 lakh over three years, before he
finally got the guts to put an end to it by telling the guy to do his worst. Of
course, the hustler then disappeared.

4) The hustler who gets you to take him home, and then he refuses to leave. He
threatens to create a commotion, sometimes takes off his clothes so you can't
force him out and generally creates a scene till you give him money - or
sometimes he just takes things and leaves.

5) The hustler who pretends to be a police officer. Often, of course, he's not
and in that case its possible to persuade a real police guy, if you're willing
to try enlisting them, to book her or just bash him up for just doing that. The
police don't like people pretending to be there - especially if that person is
making profits they could...

I DON'T want to imply that all policemen are crooks, in fact, I think there are
many fundamentally or mostly decent guys and there are ways of dealing with them
(perhaps Ashok could give tips?) But its evident that there are some really bad
cops - and by bad here I mean not just guys who beat up queer people, but the
ones who try to exploit them for money.

So these guys might be hand in glove with the hustlers of the type described
earlier. Sometimes they might be doing this on their own - just using their
uniform to scare you. Sometimes they are willing to take you into the station,
quite officially, and then see how much you will give.

Abhijeet from the Humsafar Centre told us about being called from Bombay Central
station by a guy who had been trapped by them and who didn't dare to turn to
anyone else. He spoke to the cop in charge, who was quite open about wanting the
money - he wanted a lakh. Since the victim refused to come out, all Abhijeet
could do was plead with the cop to be lenient and finally the guy was allowed to
go after paying - not a lakh, but still plenty.

OK, going out on a limb now. I do not usually believe in giving names or numbers
of suspected blackmailers, since what proof do you have, but one name cropped up
across several stories - a Salim who seems to operate in the Nagpada-Bombay
Central area. This Salim does seem to be a police guy, or to have good police
connections.

A friend of mine tried to surprise him by calling him up (from a cell phone) and
saying he knew what he (Salim) did. He got a volley of abuse and the threat that
in just an hour he (my friend) would get a call from the police. And in an hour,
a call came from a number that we called back later - and the voice picking it
up (not Salim's) said Nagpada police station. My friend dodged the question, but
it shows that Salim is either a cop or has good connections - as a friend
pointed out cynically, where has one ever heard of a Bombay cop getting cracking
on a complaint in just an hour?!

6) Hustlers who target tourists. This is like (4) and it works ever better as
tourists usually have rooms nearby they can take the guy too. And most tourists
are unaware of or scared of how the police in India work, so its easy for the
hustler to get the tourist into a compromising position - like have him take his
clothes off - and then claim to be a cop and that what he's doing is illegal.
The sums of money that can get taken are not small.

7) Hustlers on the Net. People have been trying to use the Net to blackmail
other guys for a while. Arshad told us about encountering this Salim on chat,
where he pretended it was regular cruising. He asked Arshad for his number and
the moment he got it, called him up and said he was a cop and was going to get
Arshad because he was gay, unless he paid up. Arshad is out and not likely to
get intimidated by someone threatening him just because he was gay, so he
refused to listen and that was the last he heard of Salim.

But not everyone is like that and the Net unfortunately is the ideal place to
meet scared and closeted gay guys, because many of them are too nervous to come
to a gay gathering or a party. Yet by avoiding those risks, they lay themselves
open to this much larger risk, of hustlers who know how they feel and how they -
the hustlers - can work on this to blackmail them.

The scam that is currently going on is particularly smart. A guy is chatting on
Indiatimes or Yahoo or wherever and meets another guy who seems quite ordinary,
like most of the other guys on those chat sites. They chat and at some point Guy
2 asks Guy 1 if he has any porn VCDs. If Guy 1 says yes then he proposes an
exchange and of course Guy 1 is quite happy to get some new porn in this
relatively easy way.

They set up to meet near Dadar Station (in the cases we have heard) and Guy 2
takes Guy 1's VCDs. He tells Guy 1 that he lives close by and he just wants to
go home to check if the VCDs work. He's gone a bit, and Guy 1 calls on his cell
and Guy 2 says he's just coming. He comes down with some VCDs and just when they
have done the exchange, someone else comes and catches both of them from behind.

This guy, Scamster 1 says he's a plainclothes cop and he's caught them doing
something illegal and its not just porn, but gay porn. He takes them both to a
lane nearby and sits them in front of a sugarcane juice vendor (who's clearly in
on this). He tells them there's a police station round the corner and he sends
an accomplice to get the Inspector.

A guy, Scamster 2 lands up in a police inspector's uniform. Perhaps he really is
one. He's much more rude and threatening than Scamster 1. He abuses Guy 1, calls
him gandu, hits him a bit, threatens him of how he can put him straight in jail
and in general does a good job of scaring the shit out of Guy 1. Guy 2 meanwhile
is just sitting quietly by the side and sits there like that right through.

Scamster 2 asks for one lakh (these guys have got set rates!). Guy 1 says he
can't pay that much, tells them to take what he has. The scamsters do that of
course, but still want more. In one case they got Guy 1 to call a friend to
bring more money which, in addition to the watch and gold chain and ring they
took, got their haul up to almost Rs30,000. And just as a final touch they take
Guy 1's name and address and say they'll be in touch...

This particular scam is something recent and we've heard more than one such
story in the same week. As people at the meeting pointed out, it is really quite
a smart scam because b by basing it around gay porn VCDs they ensure they catch
the victim with actual proof of his 'crime'. Porn is illegal, and because its
gay its doubly illegal (and just for good measure, in one case the cops even
started talking about copyright violation - which would be a historic first time
that they have given a fuck for all the blatent copyright violation that happens
everywhere in Bombay!)

So the VCD scam gets people with proof, it gets the closeted guys and it gets
them on the Net where they are least expecting it. Its almost like a perfect
crime - "are you sure you want to publicise this?" someone asked at the meeting.
"You might just give many more people ideas!" And if they are making upto
Rs30,000 a hit and if its not their only hit in a week, this is all clearly way
too profitable a business. Don't lets assume this particular bunch can easily be
persuaded or scared into dropping the entrapment.

More on the meeting in my next mail. In the meantime, if guys want to write in
with comments on these stories or share their own ot those of their friends,
PLEASE do so. We want as many stories and as much information as possible.

Vikram

From:  "vgd1967" <vgd1967@indiatimes.com>
Date:  Fri Jul 16, 2004  5:28 pm
Subject:  The Entrapment Meeting - 2

I don't have time today to write about the second half of our meeting on
Entrapment at the Humsafar Centre last Sunday, but here's an example of how its
already produced results. We'd decided at the meeting that one of the few things
we could do was to make sure the subject got covered in the media and here's a
report on it from today's Times of India. Many thanks to Neil Pate for writing
such a good report.

I just spoke to Neil in the Times and he says the really interesting part was
the conversation he had with the joint commissioner of police (crime) Dr
Satyapal Singh on the subject. He told me the chief crime reporter at the Times
had told him that Dr.Singh rarely speaks to the Press so it would be a waste of
his time to try on this issue.

Neil went ahead though and happily Dr.Singh agreed to speak to him on this. Even
better was what he said. There was no ambiguity about it, he said, gays and
lesbians were also citizens of this country and there was no reason that they
should be subject to blackmail and extortion. The police was bound to help them
and all they had to do was file a complaint at the nearest police station.

To hear this from a policeman as senior as this is really something and proof
that the police as a whole is not the sort of corrupt and violent organisation
we fear. Yes, I realise that your local police station might seem a far and
scary place from the police commissioner's office, but to know that officially
they are bound to help you is still something.

The problem is will the people that entrapment happens to get in touch with the
police? That was the real weak point we found in this whole entrapment issue.
More on that tomorrow,

Vikram



Blackmailers give gays, lesbians a hard time
NEIL PATE

TIMES NEWS NETWORK[ FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2004 12:09:48 AM ]

MUMBAI: It's an unfortunate side-effect of the increasing visibility of gays and
lesbians in Mumbai. According to gay activists, the last one month has seen over
a dozen members of the community being mugged by blackmailers who threaten
tomake their sexual preference public.

However, victims, fearing social ostracism and the prospect of being charged
under Section 377 (unnatural offences) of the IPC, have refrained from making
police complaints.

The blackmail brigade's modus operandi is simple. It networks with gays through
cruising sites or internet chat rooms andmobile phones, fixes meetings, and then
extorts money. Some of the blackmailer-infested areas in the city are Churchgate
station, Bandra Bandstand, Dadar railway station, Khar and Andheri station.

A fortnight ago, Jitesh, a gay college youth, was badly bashed up and robbed of
his wristwatch, mobile phone, CDplayer and wallet near the Gateway of India.
&#8220;They took my college identity card and threatened to tell my teacher and
parents about my sexuality. I lost a total of Rs 20,000,'' says a petrified
Jitesh.

In another incident, Ganesh, a gay senior executive of a television channel, was
mugged at Churchgate station. &#8220;I was waiting for the train, when two
decentlooking boys suddenly grabbed me by the hand and started demanding money.
They accused me of having sex with them,'' says Ganesh.

The charges were false, but to avoid public humiliation and the fear of being
outed to his family, Ganesh handed over his wristwatch and Rs 500 to the
hustlers.

The Humsafar Trust, a gay support group, offers counselling and legal aid to
traumatised victims at its inhouse crisis management cell. &#8220;In the last
month, we received two rescue calls from victims,'' says Abhijit, an outreach
manager with the trust. &#8220;But when we ask victims to register a police
complaint, they back out.''

The NGO has for three years been conducting a sensitisation programme with the
Mumbai police on problems faced by the sexually marginalised. &#8220;The police
have been very sensitive and co-operative but the plague of blackmailers and
hustlers still exists,'' says Abhijit.

When contacted, joint commissioner of police (crime) Dr Satyapal Singh says the
police will taken stern action against extortionists. &#8220;We do not
discriminate against gays and lesbians,' he declares. &#8220;They too are
citizens of the country, and we will protect them. All they have to do is
register a complaint at the nearest police station.''

Says Joel, a victim of extortion, &#8220;In a country where homosexuality is
outlawed, being gay or lesbian is as good as being an outcast. With no rights or
recourse to justice, and with rampant sexual discrimination, gays go through
depression, low self-esteem and even commit suicide.''

(Names of interviewees have been changed to protect identity.)

Helpline numbers

Humsafar Trust : 26673800/266505
Humjinsi : 23435700/
Aanchal: 23522787