By Flynn Remedios - Futuristic Media Network
Highly placed sources in the Social Services Branch at the Crime Branch, Mumbai confirmed on Wednesday that they are monitoring the popular international networking and social portal www.orkut.com and have zeroed in on some prominent and other not-so-prominent Bollywood celebs involved in the flesh trade.
Speaking to this journalist on condition of anonymity, a DCP heading the surveillance and monitoring project said that many "high class" call girls - some of them part-time Bollywood actresses and out-of-work models are using the Orkut network to solicit clients and even openly advertise their services. "We have some officers and agents from the Cyber crime cell logging in and continuously monitoring such profiles and checking their "scraps and messages", he explained.
We decided to check out ourselves: Searching randomly through Orkut.com, we found several hundred profiles of Indian girls with suggestive content, some of them mentioning email ids and even contact telephone numbers and not to forget very obscene vulgar photographs.
Most of the photos were not morphed - as is normally believed - as a closer examination of the jpeg, bmp and tiff files revealed but were normal photos shot with digital cameras. A basic cyber forensic examination of the photos in question uploaded on Orkut even revealed the type and make of camera used to click the photos. Next we decided to call a few random the phone numbers listed against the Orkut profiles.
In many cases, the profiles turn out to be put up by disgruntled ex-lovers and "enemies" who may have damaging material on their ex-girl friends. However, of the 20-odd phone numbers we contacted about 12 turned out to be working cell nos which were normally answered by gruff male voices. In one or two particular cases, when we mentioned their "advertisement" we were told to deposit Rs 5000/- in a particular ICICI bank account if we wanted more details. The person answering the phone claimed to have an album of celebrities and their "going rate" but we would have to pay Rs 5000/- for a one-time view of his album.
A few days ago, two Mumbai aspiring actresses and a model, who solicited clients through websites www.hotpari.com and www.damesndesires.com, were arrested by the Nagpur rural police on Friday. Police sources had then claimed that one of the arrested girls is paired opposite Abhay Deol in a forth coming film, the other two girls were models having "appeared" in various print advertisements.
Apparently, a detailed interrogation of the girls lead to the monitoring of Orkut, claim officials. Additional Commissioner of police (Mumbai Western Region) Archana Tyagi was unavailable for comment.
