Hundreds of dance bar girls, CSWs, call girls and escorts enter Goa as New Year festivities draw closer

PANAJI:  While illegal and underground ladies dance bars have mushroomed in the North Goa coastal belt, right from Morjim to Nerul, hundreds of Commercial Sex Workers (CSWs), call girls, escorts and even models and Bollywood C-grade actors and some popular Instagram influencers (who moonlight as highly-paid escorts) along with their pimps and touts have entered Goa as the New Year festivities draw closer.

This fact is not lost upon the local authorities who are aware of the problem. Calangute sarpanch Joseph Sequeira recently declared war against pimps and touts in his panchayat jurisdiction, but the sex and flesh trade has gone hi-tech with pimps using social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to promote their services, masquerading as spas, massage services, Ayurvedic healing massages and the like, which are nothing but a façade for escort and sex services.

With lakhs of tourists expected to throng Goa, particularly the North Goa coastal belt in the next two weeks, sex service providers are gearing up to meet the demand from male tourists who come in groups with friends and hire 2-3 call girls who are “shared” with groups of 4-6 males. Bookings are done online, through websites and social media profiles/handles and advances are paid to confirm the ‘service’. The women are kept in safe houses – private rooms hired by the pimps in the coastal belt and when the customers who have pre-booked the services land in Goa and make the full/balance payment, the women are sent to the hotel rooms or bungalows and villas for the time slots booked in advance.

Several or rather a few hundred models (read high profile escorts) from Mumbai are camping in Goa since the last few days and will be in the tourist paradise till New Year is over and the hordes of domestic tourists disappear.

Sequeira claimed the state police are not doing enough and not acting against the mushrooming illegal dance bars, touts and pimps in their area.

Both, the local MLA of the Calangute constituency, which includes the beach areas of Candolim, Calangute and Baga, as well as the Sarpanch have submitted letters to the State Government and the Goa Director General of Police, demanding action, but a poorly-staffed police force, handling lakhs of tourists can barely maintain law and order, forget about tracking illegal sex services.

The dance bar owners in the coastal belt initially obtain panchayat permissions for a restaurant and convert an adjacent side room into a Mumbai-style dance bar staffed by women dancers and waiters. Most of these dancers are CSWs and there are rooms available nearby which customers can book by the hour.

(This is the first part of a series of articles on Sex Tourism in Goa)