BHOPAL: A triangle of grey market moviemakers and distributors with a Pakistani link, which shot adult and porn videos of young Indian girls/models aspiring to make it big in television and film industry and then uploaded the content as desi soft porn to netizens/subscribers in over 20 countries has been busted in Madhya Pradesh's commercial capital Indore.
So far six men have been arrested by the MP Police's cyber cell from Indore and Gwalior, who were key players of the racket, which had strands in Indore, Mumbai, and Gwalior.
The matter came to light on July 25, when a 22-year-old female model from Indore reported that her adult promotional video was shot by some men at a farmhouse in Indore in December 2019, with the promise of getting her role in web series of Ekta Kapoor's Balaji Telefilms' subscription-based video on demand platform Alt Bajali (which makes web series').
But a few months later the same video was found being played as desi soft porn film of 25 minutes on various adult and porn websites.
After registering a case under various sections of the Information and Technology Act 2000, the Indore unit of MP Police's Cyber Cell swung into action and arrested four men -- all residents of Indore -- who were involved in approaching the young model and getting her to shoot the adult video with a young male actor (who actually turned out to be involved in operating sex racket in that city). The other arrested men included a model coordinator and the short filmmaker and director.
A subsequent probe by the cyber cell cops led to the other strands of the racket based in Mumbai and Gwalior.
"The 26-minute video which was shot at an Indore farmhouse in December was rendered to two men Ashok Singh and Vijayanand Pandey in Mumbai for editing. The video was subsequently sold as a desi soft porn film by the duo to the operators of the Gwalior-based OTT (over the top media services) platform. The OTT platform was operated by a young software engineer and his tech-savvy friend.
The concerned OTT platform being operated from Gwalior then uploaded the desi soft porn film to its subscribers spread in at least 22 countries, including the US, Germany, Australia, Poland and Switzerland for basic subscription charge of Rs 249 per month," Indore Cyber Cell police superintendent Jitendra Singh told The New Indian Express on Wednesday.
Both the men, including the young software engineer (who did Bachelor of Engineering from an Indore college) and his aide have been arrested on Monday. The duo are residents of Gwalior and Morena districts, who were running the OTT platform from Gwalior since November 2019 with the help of a Pakistan-based website developer Hussain Ali.
"The two operators of the OTT platform, who are on police remand till Thursday, have revealed that since November 2019 their OTT platform had uploaded similar 84 desi soft porn films -- each of the duration of 20-25 minutes -- to their subscribers based in at least 22 countries.
The Pakistan-based web developer was initially hired by them through an Australian crowdsourcing marketplace website (which allows potential employers to post jobs that freelancers can then bid to compete) for Rs 18,000, but he later became their OTT platform's permanent web developer and maintenance in-charge for Rs 30,000 to Rs 40,000 (Rs 60,000 to Rs 70,000 in Pakistani currency) monthly.
Investigations so far have revealed that the young models/girls from Indore and neighbourhood aspiring to make career in films and television serials were paid Rs 3,000 to Rs 5,000 for one adult film shoot. Later, the films would be edited into full-fledged desi soft porn short movies by the Mumbai men, before being sold to various OTT platforms, including the one operated from Gwalior for sums up to Rs 5 lakh per film.
With the one of the four men arrested from Indore (the male model who featured in the adult promo shoot in December 2019) being involved in a sex racket, the cops are also zeroing on the possibility of girls lured for adult promo shoot having been pushed into possible prostitution.