The report of the Entrapment Meet at the Humsafar Centre held on 11 Jul 04

Vikram  wrote: on 15 June 2004 
To: gaybombay@yahoogroups.com

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.





home