Commercial sexual exploitation of kids: Online solicitation poses challenge for cops

16-year-old Jyothi* came from a broken family in Vijayawada. Her father, a daily wage labourer who often fell sick, could not afford to get her educated. As a result, she dropped out of school in Class 2. When she was 9 years old, her parents split, leaving her grandmother to take care of her. Her grandmother later sent Jyothi to live with her aunt. It was here that a person who used to frequent her aunt’s house saw that she did not have a proper support system and began messaging her frequently over WhatsApp. Jyothi was first hesitant but soon got swayed by the person, who coaxed her with comforting words and even promised to take care of her father, who needed constant medical care. The more they texted, the more Jyothi began trusting him. The man told Jyothi that he would arrange for the money and took her to an unknown lady’s house, telling her that he would be back in a day with the money. Authorities say that Jyothi was then sedated and forced into sex work for months, facing immense trauma and abuse, until the police received a tip-off last year and rescued her. While Jyothi has since been through therapy and has also picked up several skills with the help of an NGO and officials of the Child Welfare Committee over the last seven months, many minors like her are often the victim of trafficking, which has largely moved online in India, not only in bigger cities, but also in smaller towns. Activists working on the ground say that many brokers have now turned to targeting minors who come from broken families or those who live in abject poverty, luring them with the promise of a better life and grooming them before forcing them into the sex trade. Take the case of Ayesha*, a 16-year-old from neighbouring Guntur district. She was a Class 5 dropout and her father was an alcoholic daily wage labourer while her mother had mental health issues. When Ayesha was 12 years old, her sister eloped and took Ayesha along to her in-laws’ place. Here, Ayesha was lonely and spent her evenings in a park, where a teenager began giving her company. Soon, he began texting her and would sweet talk her. Once, when she was invited to his house, he and his mother allegedly locked her in a room. They kept her there for seven months, where she was forced into sex work and raped every day by customers, before she managed to escape and was rescued by the police who found her on the streets. Grooming a common thread In most of these cases, activists say that the accused indulge in ‘online sexual grooming’, a phenomenon where a perpetrator ‘prepares’ a child or adult for sexual abuse, exploitation or ideological manipulation. “It is a common pattern. They gradually increase interaction with the minors. WhatsApp and Facebook are the main tools used by the accused in the cases. They mainly target minors in the age group of 14-18 years. They either promise marriage or roles in movies/serials while luring them,” says renowned activist NVS Rammohan, who is the director of HELP, an NGO that works with children who have been sexually abused. A UNICEF report from 2016 also points out that establishing the criminality of grooming is often difficult in court. “Distinguishing grooming from conversations that result from increasingly intimate relationships or genuine enquiries and exchange of information and views based on shared interest is difficult,” the UNICEF report points out. Counsellors, on the other hand, point out that a clear sign of grooming is the age difference between the victim and the perpetrator as the accused are often much older. A report of the Parliamentary Committee on Information Technology in 2014 also emphasised how these predators “conceal their true identity whilst using the internet to ‘groom’ potential victims for sexual purposes”. HELP Programme Officer BV Sagar says that while such cases are mainly restricted to cities, growing towns also see a fair number of such crimes. Sagar, who is based in Ongole in Andhra Pradesh, gives the example of a teenager who was lured from the town all the way to Srikakulam to be trafficked, but authorities managed to rescue her just in time after a missing person’s complaint was filed. “When it comes to towns like Ongole, the accused identify minors who are in some crisis and have migrated from villages nearby. For example, it could be students who have enrolled in degree colleges or are taking up some vocational course in the nearest town. They are also trapped either via Facebook or WhatsApp,” he says. A challenge for investigators Many cases have also been reported with the Cyber Crime Station (CCS) and SHE Teams in Hyderabad, where adults have either created fake profiles or used their own to chat with minors and young adults to groom them, and in some cases, pushing them into the sex trade. Generally, such offenders are booked under provisions of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act and the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA). If the grooming takes place online, they are also booked under the Information Technology (IT) Act. However, with criminals adapting technology as part of their modus operandi to carry out such crimes, officials say that they do face difficulties in keeping up. Often, when authorities receive a complaint, they can’t track the accused and have to depend on the cyber crime police. Often by the time they manage to track the accused, the crime has already been committed. “The issue is that end-to-end encryption apps are now readily available to everyone including traffickers. While it is generally marketed as privacy for the user, the security challenges it poses are not discussed enough. Many criminals have been using that to their advantage. While we are well equipped to track and take action in such cases, the investigation process does slow down,” says an official from the cyber crime wing of the Hyderabad police, who did not wish to be identified. TNM has learnt that sometimes, after trapping the minor the accused even provide a number that customers can contact. “The WhatsApp profile of the number will have pictures of the girls who are being ‘offered’. There are ‘inviting’ photographs with different attires and often the photos of the girls keep changing. But, because of end-to-end encryption, the tracking gets difficult,” says a senior police official from Andhra Pradesh, in the know.  Presently, the police are largely able to only get cases registered via decoy operations based on tip-offs. Even then, officials lament that the accused are behind bars only for a short time and get bail easily. Speaking to TNM, SP, Women Protection Cell, Andhra Pradesh, KGV Saritha says, “Online trafficking is really a big menace and tracking the customers is proving to be difficult. We seek the help and support of the cyber crime police and the process is a little time-consuming.”   *Names changed