A whistle blower – E-prostitution sprouts up

LAHORE: While Heera Mandi, the original red-light area of Lahore might look deserted today, finding a prostitute for pleasure is just a click away now, as various websites are offering sex workers on affordable rates to people, Pakistan Today has learnt.
According to an online investigation conducted by Pakistan Today, call girls could be booked from various websites and by text messaging as well. According to a research, there were dozens of Pakistani websites, forums and blogs available on the Internet, which were openly promoting flesh trade in the country.
Most of these websites maintained photo galleries of prostitutes along with their rates tempting people to enter the world of pleasure. Most websites claimed that they offered college students and working women for sex, private dance parties or hanging out while some websites even marketed celebrities and new fashion models.
Although one could easily find these websites, the owners of such portals maintained a certain privacy level for protecting identities of the prostitutes and their clients. According to a research, all such activities were being conducted without the fear of prosecution. When a person approached a website to book a prostitute, the site’s owner replied with an e-mail carrying call girls pictures, login credentials of a couple of photo galleries and a person named Amir’s cellular phone number.
When Amir was contacted, he refused to recognise anyone saying that he received hundreds of inquires everyday and it was impossible for him to respond to all e-mails. But on disclosing the e-mail ID, Amir started offering various services and tried his level best to ensure a maximum privacy level. He claimed that his e-brothel offered call girls, escorts, private dancers and strippers.
Amir said that he needed a couple of days to arrange the desired prostitutes. He said that girls were only sent to three-star or above hotels and the client had to bear all the expenses associated with the prostitute. Amir said that he charged minimum Rs 20,000 for a call girl for three to four hours while for celebrities and fashion models the prices ranged from Rs 0.3 million to 0.8 million for a short time span.
He said that if anyone wanted to take the girl out of Lahore or abroad, he had to pay for the airfare and other costs. Amir said that he avoided sending girls to a particular five-star hotel at the Mall but was ready to send prostitutes to other hotels at the Mall and MM Alam Road. He said the all call girls working for his agency showed medical certificates to clients for proving their fitness, as all females had to pass a routine screening process to avoid the possibility of having sexually transmitted diseases (STD).
The Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) National Response Centre for Cyber Crimes said that the law enforcement agencies could not tackle the situation. “A superpower like the US cannot stop cyber crimes, WikiLeaks is the most recent example, what do you expect from Pakistan?” a FIA official said on the condition of anonymity.
A Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) official said that blocking content on the website was a very controversial option and the PTA had no authority to block any website unless ordered by the federal government. He said that the PTA would be glad to block all such websites promoting sex trade in the country if the federal government granted permission.