DNA unearths a new, shocking trend of cyber cafes offering cabins to young lovers, filming their intimate moments and selling the footage in cheap CDs.
MUMBAI: The two of us walked in and headed straight to the cramped counter with an air of people eager to cut the officialese and get down to business. The scrawny desk guy at this cyber café opposite Jhun Jhu Rao market in Kalyan is used to couples.
“Ghante ka bees (it's Rs 20 for an hour),” he informs without as much as a glance. You can choose from seven musty cabins. These are covered with wooden walls on four sides, with a swinging door to enter from.
Once inside, it’s a private world with the PC, the comp unit, two chairs jostling for floor-space and the two of you. Well, almost.
Just as you think you have bought some love space far from the madding crowd, a hidden camera as small as a Gems clip gets busy at work, capturing your most intimate and potentially damning moments in detail. The cameras are placed on the top of the cabin and beneath the comp cabinet.
Scores of other cyber cafes in the city have virtually become porn film studios, and most shockingly, you and your lover could end up being an inadvertent part of the cast. In a city where space is at a super-premium, cyber café owners are exploiting couples’ need for privacy by using technology to clandestinely film their most intimate moments.
DNA got hold of several video CDs packed with steamy cubicle scenes with stunning ease from cyber café owners in Mulund and Kalyan. It then checked out a few of these hangouts and discovered that the café managements were offering couples the privacy of cabins which are fitted with hidden cameras, filming them without permission or consent, putting the footage into CDs and selling them for as cheap as Rs 100. The CDs are mostly circulated among people known to the café owners or employees.
So, while it is as hot as reality TV gets for a voyeur, for those being inadvertently filmed, it is cold murder of reputation, privacy and self-respect.
An employee of a cyber café in Mulund says that such secret filming is rampant in Mulund, Ghatkopar, Kalyan, Dombivli, Ulhasnagar and even parts of the western suburbs such as Andheri.
He says between Ghatkopar and Mulund, there are 11 such cafes. Dombivli has got three. There are three in the same building in Kalyan (west), and one in Ulhasnagar. At the Kalyan cyber café that we visited, there is one cabin which has no computers but is still given out to couples at a higher rate — Rs 30 an hour! Shedding all pretensions of offering web services, this empty cabin actually comes with a complimentary cold drink for the extra fee.
“We specially reserve these cabins for couples. They form the mainstay of our clientele,” says Sunil, owner of the café, in casual conversation. A cyber café in the same building in Kalyan has got eight enclosed cabins, out of which only two have internet connections. Ironically, these two are also fitted with hidden cameras and are always earmarked for couples, says an employee at the café.
Most café owners and staff admit that they know fully well the desperation for private space among young city couples. Rajib Singh, a cyber café employee in Mulund (west), says, “We have 12 PCs. Only five have internet connections and the rest are used for gaming. But almost all the cabins are packed with couples who come here solely to get intimate in the cabins.”
The owner of a cyber cafe in Oshiwara, who refused to be named, says, “Privacy is maintained in cyber cafes as people chatting on webcams do not want to be disturbed. Nevertheless, we know that over a period of time people have started misusing this facility. But there is no question of filming them clandestinely at my cyber café.”
People who visit without a partner complain about preference given to couples. But to unsuspecting couples, the local cyber café is a cosy, affordable love nest. Period. “This is the cheapest means of spending time for couples like us as no one comes here to disturb us,” says Santosh, who visits a Mulund cyber café regularly with his girlfriend. Not the safest, evidently.
Names have been changed to protect identities. DNA correspondent Narayan V and photographer Mukesh Trivedi repeatedly visited the cyber cafes over a week, sometimes with their friends posing as couples. The purpose of the visits was to find out whether unsuspecting couples were indeed being filmed clandestinely or if cyber café owners were paying people to make sleaze flicks. DNA found out that genuine couples were indeed at peril of being exploited
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