Calcutta is not exactly a sin city. A research finding put the number of brothels in Mumbai at 12,000, while Delhi was credited with 2,000. Calcutta has even fewer.

Also, less than five per cent of the prostitutes here are apparently born and brought up in the city. Quite possibly, even the visitors to the city’s red-light district are drawn largely from outside.

What’s more, the city boasts of having possibly the country’s only sex workers’ union and a pioneering initiative by an NGO, which has helped raise the use of condoms from an alarming five per cent to over 90 per cent in the city’s red-light district.

Yet, everywhere in eastern India, the city has a dubious reputation for sleaze. Cabarets, discos, bars and pick-up joints welcome both voyeurs and the more adventurous from smaller towns all over the east.

Tabloids carrying only advertisements merrily advertise the easy availability of “women masseurs” willing to visit homes, while guest-houses, parlours and holiday resorts are believed to wink at forbidden pleasures.

There is no evidence, either, to suggest that availability of pornographic literature and films has gone down in the age of cyber-porn.

Two curious incidents last week, in this context, beg for attention. In the first incident, a woman, reportedly in a night-dress and slippers, walked into a park with a male companion after 10.30 pm. Half-an-hour later, she was dead, killed by the companion.

Policemen supposedly patrol the area on bicycles and they were not very far away when the crime took place. Why would any responsible policeman allow a woman in a night-dress to enter the park at the hour?

The guardians of public morality and upholders of the law obviously do so because it is profitable.

The role of the police appears suspect because of their long period of inaction, followed by sudden bursts of chest-thumping raids.

The hotels in Diamond Harbour and holiday resorts between Diamond Harbour and Joka, numbering around 150, according to some accounts, have been well-known meeting points for amorous couples. But then there is no law preventing unmarried men and women from living together.

In a well-publicised raid last week at one of the resorts, the police hauled up seven men and six women for immoral trafficking. The prize catches were two politicians who had furnished fake names.

Police almost certainly were aware of their identity, which would explain the timely presence of television crew at the site to film the raid.

It is also safe to assume that the raid was either prompted to settle a political or a personal score. Had it been otherwise, so many ‘pleasure resorts’ would not have mushroomed in the first place.

Here, ironies never cease. Prostitution is illegal but red-light districts exist. Police enjoy the power of harassing couples and exploiting both victims and the clients under the Prevention of Immoral Traffic Act.

Even married couples out on a late-night drive are often harassed and hauled up if they fail to pay up. But, remarkably, not a single conviction under the act is reported, possibly because actual prostitutes cannot be persuaded to depose against clients, pimps or brothel-owners.

City police register hundreds of cases every year against women for soliciting but have they been able to secure conviction in even one?

Calcutta Police will do an immense service if it comes out with a white paper on its drive against immoral trafficking and the outcome, if any.

The incidents call for a fresh look at the malaise. The media often report on high-flying glamour girls offering sex for money in their eagerness for high living. Some have been hauled up in different cities, but their clients not only get away but also remain shadowy figures in the media.

The number of such voluntary sex workers is said to be on the rise, even in Calcutta, but it remains insignificant when compared to the large number of girls who are raped, abducted and forced into prostitution.

The society and the law both treat them as either criminals or victims, requiring punishment or isolation.

The city must be made safer for women, including prostitutes. That should remain the prime duty of the police and the state. It is pointless for them to get worked up over what consenting adults do behind closed doors.