Cops crack down on GB Road

new delhi: The city's best-known red-light area is under khaki siege.
The reason is not very clear with no official word on what police sources claim is the beginning of a "complete shutdown to curb crime''. For now, the 1,800-odd sex workers housed in the 116 kothas on Garstin Bastion Road (GB Road) or Swami Shradhanand Marg whose stint with the world's oldest profession dates back to the Mughal era are feeling the heat with many of them alleging that the police presence is driving away customers.
The "crackdown'' started, say police sources, on "orders from above'' and the idea is to "kill them economically''.Two battalions of Delhi Police have been deployed along with local cops. There are at least two police personnel in front of each house.
The immediate provocation for the police presence was the murder of two railway police personnel who were stabbed by a local miscreant on G B Road. The policemen were posted there on election duty and the accused Chawan Bala allegedly works as a pimp in one of the kothas.
DCP (central) Jaspal Singh said, "We had deployed policemen on Sunday as a `preventive measure'. We keep performing such drills in different parts of the district. The area has recently witnessed a spurt in crime rate and our investigations showed that a lot of that could have been prevented with a good amount of police presence.''
Sex workers and kotha owners, meanwhile, are apprehensive that this may be the beginning of an effort to force them to vacate the place. Says Leenabai (name changed), owner of a kotha who has been living here for 40 years: "This place has given us everything. We do not want to leave this place. There have been a few incidents of late but the police has tightened the noose inexplicably. They are not allowing anyone inside; even the girls cannot go out to buy supplies. How long can we sustain ourselves like this?''
She added, "Only 10% of the money NGOs get in our name reaches us. We do not want to go anywhere, but if the government has plans to impart training to help us earn our livelihood in any other manner, many of us would be willing to leave this profession.'' About 10 cases of immoral trafficking have been registered so far this year.
"We have also been detaining young boys who double up as pimps. They have been creating a lot of mischief, running extortion rackets and threatening people with `bladebaazi'. The number of such complaints have gone up hugely for some time now,'' said a senior police officer.
He added that a large number of jawans from various paramilitary forces in transit from insurgency-prone areas of J&K and north-eastern states also land up at G B Road and often end up picking fights with the pimps.
Said Iqbal Ahmad of Bhartiya Patita Udhaar Sabha, "The cops want to close GB Road and are harassing the sex workers. On Sunday, they had deployed 160 cops in the area and did not allow any one to do any business.'' According to the police, there are more than 1,000 pimps, many of them with criminal record.