Siliguri, Feb. 20: After ?sleaze? beauty parlours, sleaze physiotherapy centres.
A raid conducted by the police department last week has blown the lid off a sleaze racket run by a couple in Hakimpara, using ?physiotherapy? as a front.
The raiding team caught a male client and three girls red-handed and even seized pornographic material. The husband-wife duo has been arrested.
?We had a specific complaint that the centre was involved in nefarious activities and when we raided the place we caught them red-handed,? additional superintendent of police Tripurari said.
Saying that the incident was a new trend in the organised flesh-trade racket of Siliguri, he said: ?This centre had no male employees and there were only women who gave more than just a massage to clients. According to the centre?s register, the patients who have visited it in the past were only men. The ambience in no way resembled a medical clinic. Moreover, we even seized some pornographic literature, blue films and condoms from the place.?
With beauty parlours already under the scanner for carrying out such nefarious activities, police said racketeers are preferring this ?relatively safer? option as ?medical clinics? are usually considered above suspicion.
?This is the first time that we have seen someone use a physiotherapy centre as a front to run a flesh-trade racket. This case has come as an eye-opener and we are keeping a strict watch on other such centres as well, though there has been no specific complaint against any other centre so far,? Tripurari said.
The police have also decided to intensify vigil over the sundry spas and massage bars that have mushroomed all over the town of late.
Several physiotherapy centres have mushroomed in different parts of the town. Incidentally, none of them has procured licences from the state health directorate.
?Physiotherapy centres need to procure a licence from the state health directorate under the Clinical Establishment Act. But there is no record of any physiotherapy centre in the whole of Darjeeling district,? said T.K. Chattaraj, the chief medical officer of health, said.
R.N. Bhattacharya of the North Bengal Medical College and Hospital?s department for communicable diseases said that beauty and massage parlours and, now the physiotherapy centres, are emerging as potential areas for the spread of HIV.
?We carry out safe-sex campaigns in red-light areas. We have tried to extend the campaign to beauty and massage parlours in Pradhan Nagar area, but the owners of the parlours always denied us access saying that they are not involved in any such activity,? he said.