Heading To Goa For New Year Party? Guys Must Carry Their Aadhaar And Check Out Why..
Panaji: Linking your Aadhaar with bank accounts and cellphone numbers must be already pestering you with ever extending deadlines and warnings. And anything official tend to kill the joy. Yet another place where you are now supposed to show your Aadhaar now. Guys heading to Goa for the New Year celebrations will have to show their Aadhaar for a stay at hotel, joining a party and even going for paid sex.
According to a report in the ToI, pimps in Goa are making Aadhaar mandatory, as a group of five young men from Delhi discovered recently.
The reports says, the men who flew in for their friend's bachelor party, landed in Goa with a "contact" in hand. After booking into a hotel in the North Goa beach belt, they called up the "contact" and made enquiries for five girls.
The man promised to revert soon but there was no call for hours. The group waited in anticipation while the man got busy verifying the cellphone number of the customers. Having established the caller was genuinely from Delhi, the man called back, but this time he demanded they send a picture of each of their Aadhaar cards via WhatsApp. He also wanted a photo of their room keys with the hotel tag attached to it.
The Delhi group complied with the demands though. At the other end began a detailed background check on the men, including a survey of the area near the hotel premises for any impending danger.
As the police are cracking down on flesh trade in Goa, the sex workers and their agents are getting extra cautious. They don't want to leave anything to chance and verify customers' identity with Aadhaar card to ensure they are not police decoys.
"Even after so many checks, the number of girls demanded will not be delivered. Pimps refrain from supplying many girls at once because if 5-10 of them are caught in one police raid, their entire earning collapses," the report quoted a police officer as saying.
Most tourists arrive in Goa mainly with a plan to chill out as several websites and social media forums promise escorts and call girls. "But most of the time, tourists end up being cheated," says an officer.
Here's how they operate: The pimp points to a girl standing on a balcony who waves to the customer. The customer pays somewhere around Rs4,000-Rs5,000 to the pimp. The tourist is then asked to go up to the room. When he knocks, nobody opens the door. Hearing the banging on the door, those from neighbouring apartments come out (possibly planted by the pimps), and make a noise, forcing the tourist to flee the spot.