Bollywood choreographer held in Mumbai for ‘running’ global prostitution racket

MUMBAI: The city crime branch has busted an alleged international prostitution

racket

with the arrest of a

Bollywood

choregrapher who would reportedly send young women overseas on the pretext of dance assignments and force them into the

sex trade

.


City crime branch’s anti-extortion cell on Thursday arrested Agnes Hamilton (56), who runs a dance class in the Bollywood hub of Lokhandwala in Andheri. Police say Hamilton’s arrest has also exposed how touts and fraudulent acting and dance classes indulge in

prostitution

rackets.

Hamilton has worked as a choregrapher and even featured in dance sequences of some Bollywood movies. Her Facebook page shows her posing with several actors and politicians.

She has been booked under sections of the Indian Penal Code as well as Immoral Traffic Prevention Act for allegedly sending women abroad.

Police said Hamilton, who shuttles between India and Malaysia, had been allegedly running the racket since a few years. The case came to light only recently, after the Kenyan government deported one of the trafficked women.

Investigating officer Raju Surve said the deported woman, who hails from an improverished background, had attended Hamilton’s Star Enterprises Dance Class last year.

“The woman said Hamilton told her she would get good work in a Kenyan hotel. After reaching

Kenya

, though, one Razia Patel took her to Nairobi and forced her into prostitution,” said Ajay Sawant, senior inspector of the anti-extortion cell.

Police said Hamilton would get Rs 40,000 from her Kenyan counterpart for every woman she sent to Kenya, Bahrain or Dubai.

The deported woman told the police that Patel had threatened to frame her in narcotics offence case and kept her passport with her if she refused her. Police said it was only after Kenyan police raided one of the dubious hotels that “the woman was found and she narrated her ordeal to them. They then recovered her passport from the accused and deported her to India,” said Dilip Sawant, deputy commissioner of police (crime).

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