Off Puri's holy precinct, unholy sex tourism has made Pentakota, a small fishing hamlet, paradise for paedophiles
White Man's Haunt
Here's why Pentakota is a major attraction for paedophiles:- The entire sex trade is geared to service paedophiles
- Children below 13 offer sex for a few hundred rupees
- Some 20-odd massage parlours offer child prostitutes to clients
- Driven by extreme poverty, many families have harnessed their children to the trade to supplement income
- Police, the local authorities and even the state government have turned a blind eye to the problem.
Sdevi has seen just 13 summers, but you wouldn't know that looking at her. For the last four years, she has been out every night on the beach that stretches beyond her squalid fishing village of Pentakota on the outskirts of Puri in Orissa. But she's out on no casual stroll, she's there for a purpose. Children like her are easy prey for paedophiles, nearly all white males, stalking the golden beaches off holy town Puri. Budevi treasures the few hundred rupees that her nightly jaunts fetch her, not to mention the 'bonus' in the form of expensive gadgets, like the camera-phone a satisfied firangi male client left behind as a gift. Another left behind the HIV virus, but that's another story.
A poverty-ridden village that loses on an average 10 men a year to the turbulent sea, Pentakota is fast gaining notoriety as a favourite hunting ground for paedophiles on the east coast. According to Peoples' Empowerment and Need-Based Community Development (Pencode), an NGO that works in the area, even by conservative estimates, there are well over a hundred children from Pentakota working as full- or part-time sex workers. Their clients, mostly in the 40-60 age group, are guests at the 50-odd budget hotels and lodges at Puri II, the section of the town famous for the Jagannath temple, but around which holy site perversity rolls out an unholy yatra.
Prominent among the 'temples of pleasure' are the 20-odd massage parlours which offer allurements ranging from "complete rejuvenation by nubile fingers" to "100 per cent satisfaction and milk and honey baths".
| | | | Blame the fibre boats. The poor fisherfolk tried to compete, got into debt...finally prostitution. | | | | |
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The services come cheap: Rs 100 an hour for a simple massage, Rs 300 for oral sex and
Rs 600 for "complete sex". There's more on offer for hard-core voyeurs and perverts: pimps can arrange for group sex with two or three kids (boys or girls or both) for anything between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000. Many foreigners also prefer to film the action.
"It's abject poverty that makes Pentakota a prime destination for sex tourism," says Pencode chairman Kurapati Samson, a resident of the village. At any point of time, at least a couple of hundred foreigners—an overwhelming majority of them males—stay at Puri II. And the numbers go up during the peak season between October-end and February to about 500. "Unlike the main part of the town, the beach here is quite empty and devoid of Indian tourists. Hence the preference for this stretch," says Samson. Quite a number of tourists are backpackers and stay for days and keep returning year after year.
Lodge owners are quite frank about the sex services on offer. "We provide both young boys and girls," says the manager of Sapphire Hotel, which even offers rooms by the hour. "Complete sex will cost Rs 600 for an ordinary kid and Rs 750 for a good one." The hotel even has an ayurvedic spa that offers everything from "oral care" (a euphemism for oral sex) to full body massage with "hundred per cent guaranteed satisfaction", as the young man running the show promises. A stone's throw away, at the massage parlour at Sea Palace Hotel, the manager even has an album on the ready, with pictures of the masseurs and masseuses, all children. I recognise Budevi and a few other kids I had seen at the beach earlier in the afternoon.
I also meet Manga Devi, one of the pimps who supplies kids to the massage parlours and hotels. She is also an outreach worker for Pencode and advises her charges to use the condom. "I ask them to always use condoms. Of course, foreigners prefer to use them. It's the Indian clients who are a problem," she says. Manga, 22, speaks English and knows enough Italian, Japanese, French, Spanish and German to communicate with visitors from these countries.
It is through her that I meet Budevi. "I started by offering simple massage to foreigners during the day four years ago," she says of her initiation. "Then I learned that many foreigners prefer to get it done at night and pay more for it. I started doing that and now I earn a lot. Much more than my father who risks his life by going out into the sea every evening." And what does she do with these earnings? She gives them all to her mother. Does she ever ask her about her source of income? "She knows, but doesn't ask unnecessary questions. The money is important," Budevi tells me.
The fisherfolk of Pentakota belong to the Vadabalija caste, known for its liberal sexual mores. They migrated from the coastal districts of Andhra Pradesh about 55 to 60 years ago and settled outside Puri since the catch from the deep seas off the Orissa coast looked more promising. The village was named after the one in Andhra Pradesh from where Koviri Sattiya, the first migrant, hailed. Till 1983-84, the fishermen used to venture out on wooden catamarans. Their earnings were limited to about Rs 50 a day, but was shared equally in the community since it was a very close-knit one. But things started changing in the mid-'90s when fibre-reinforced boats with motors made an appearance. Earnings of a few who owned these boats started increasing dramatically and others had to borrow heavily from moneylenders to keep up with them. With debt came penury. Prostitution followed soon after.
"With increasing poverty, women and kids started venturing into prostitution to supplement the family income," says Samson. "That Pentakota adjoins Puri II which is the preferred destination for foreigners has facilitated and encouraged prostitution." Samson belongs to one of the handful of relatively affluent families of migrants and is also one of the dozen-odd graduates from the community.
The local administration refuses to even acknowledge the problem. The police prefers to turn a blind eye. Journalists are discouraged from reporting on the flesh trade lest it bring a bad name to Puri that attracts about 40,000 visitors daily and up to two lakh during religious festivals like the rath yatra. It is only very recently that state health minister Bijoyshree Routray made an oblique admission of the problem and said the government would take "necessary measures" to curb HIV. There is still no word yet on cracking down on the sex trade which has put Pentakota on the international paedophile map.