Police bust escort service website, UP man arrested

Panaji: Goa police arrested a third person, Yogesh Kumar, a 41-year-old resident of Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh, in connection with the operation of an alleged escort service website.

“Kumar himself was the creator of the website deepikaverma.com. Further search cum seizure panachanama was drawn at the place as shown by Kumar where data of the website was stored. The CPU was seized. He was taken into custody and brought to Goa,” SP crime Rahul Gupta said.

Goa's cyber crime cell also blocked access to 78 escort-related websites through cooperation with I4C (Indian cyber crime coordination centre) and the department of telecommunications.

The investigation is ongoing by the crime branch to identify others involved in running such websites.

The first major breakthrough came about with the arrest of two key suspects from Madanapalle in Andhra Pradesh. Gupta said that Syed Usman, 54 from Andhra Pradesh and Mohammad Mohebbulla, 30 from Haryana who were allegedly involved in creating escort websites, one of which was, www.safewalkgoa.com. These websites displayed obscene photos of women and provided a contact number, 973xxxxx59 for customers to call.

Gupta said that on receiving confirmation from customers over the phone, the accused would connect them with other agents. Deals were reportedly fixed with customers paying via cash, Google Pay, or Paytm, and the website operators taking a commission.

The investigation revealed similar websites operating in major Indian cities like Bangalore and Chennai. The website in question for this case has been taken down.


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