nti-moral policing campaigner and model Reshmi Nair’s life took a tumble the moment she stepped into the air-conditioned luxury of a five-star hotel room in Kochi on Tuesday night. The 27-year-old got arrested on the charge of sex trafficking.
Unknown to her, plainclothes officers investigating an online commercial sex racket ring were on a stake out at the hotel.
They had been electronically snooping on her, among other 12 other suspects, since October as part of a sweeping anti-trafficking Crime Branch operation code-named “Big Daddy”.
Her husband and fellow activist, Rahul Pashupalan, who had dropped her at the hotel, was arrested minutes later. Investigators found their six-year-old son asleep in the car’s rear seat.
It still remained a puzzle how the once successful techie couple with a mentionable public profile became entangled in what investigators said was an online racket that advertised and arranged commercial sex for rich clients.
The police quoted the couple as stating that crippling debt caused by a failed film project had forced them to make some “hard choices in life”.
Rahul and Reshmi had met as engineering college students and worked in reputed IT companies. In November last, they stepped into the media spotlight as aggressive Facebook campaigners who championed the right of partners to overtly express their love by kissing in public.
The “Kiss of Love” campaign resonated among urban youth across the country, triggered huge street protests for and against the movement. It sharply divided public opinion, often raucously so, setting off speculations that couple’s arrest could be politically motivated.
IG, CB, S. Sreejith, told The Hindu that the couple, like other suspects in the case, led a double life. The common factor in their secret lives was one Abdul Khader, 31, of Kasaragod.
Khader placed Internet ads promising to pair off attractive escorts with clients willing to pay the fee he charged. Reshmi was one among his several “women contacts”.
