Karnataka - Bangalore   

Exploitation of a different kind

BANGALORE: For five days last week, a private Kannada television channel broadcast footage of its reporters approaching sex workers soliciting customers on the streets around Gandhinagar and M.G. Road. These women were filmed without their knowledge and their faces shown without being “masked”.

The result of this “sting operation” has, however, been disastrous for the women who were shown on television. A group of them were at the city office of Vimochana, a women’s organisation, with complaints about the outcome of the “sting” operation.

“The apparent reason for the broadcasting was to show that prostitution is ‘rampant’ and becoming a ‘public nuisance’, that the police are not doing anything to curb this menace. But, tell me, who does not know that we exist and that men come to us for sex? What is new about it? Was the broadcast not merely sensationalism? asks Leela, a sex worker.

“My friend was shown on air and the next day she was thrown out of her house by her landlord. Who will now give her a house to stay? Another friend had left her child with her relatives in her village. Now they have sent away the child back to her. Who will take care of the child now? Will those television people now help these women?” asks Salma, another sex worker.

The Hindu met Leela and Salma, who along with three other sex workers, were at the office of Vimochana. However, none of the women who were shown on that television channel made it to the meeting, shattered as they were by their identities having been revealed.

While a draft bill to regulate “sting operations” is still being worked on at the national level, unfortunately for the women, there is no law banning the media from broadcasting footage of them without their permission.

“As of now, there is no law in place. But the women could take legal action under the general provisions of defamation and right to privacy,” says Siddharth Narrain, a lawyer at the Alternative Law Forum.

Legal recourse could also be possible under Section 5 of the Cable Television Networks (Regulation) Act, 1995 read with provisions of the Cable Television Networks Rules, 1994, which specifies that no programme can be transmitted or retransmitted on cable service if it contains anything obscene, defamatory, deliberate, false, and suggestive innuendos and half truths.

For now though the women are more vulnerable. “What if someone who recognises these women and knows where they live goes right up to their house asking for their services?” asks Gayathri, a former sex worker, who now is part of Vimochana.

For the record, prostitution is not illegal or criminal but facilitating prostitution through brothels is. An adult who lives off the earnings of a prostitute can be punished under the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act 1956.

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