Panaji: Banks and cellphone companies aren’t the only ones demanding your Aadhaar card. Pimps in Goa are also making it mandatory, as a group of five young men from Delhi discovered recently.The men, who flew in for their friend’s bachelor party, landed in Goa with a ‘contact’ in hand. After booking into a hotel in the North Goa beach belt, they called up the ‘contact’ and made enquiries for five girls.The man promised to revert soon. For the next few hours, the group waited in anticipation while the man got busy verifying the cellphone number of the customer. Having established the caller was genuinely from Delhi, the man called back, this time demanding they send a photograph of each of their Aadhaar cards via WhatsApp. He also wanted a photo of their room keys with the hotel tag attached to it.Baffled, the Delhi group complied. At the other end began a detailed background check on the men, including a survey of the area near the hotel premises for any impending danger.The ‘danger’ is from police who are cracking down on flesh trade in the state. Agents and pimps don’t want to leave anything to chance and verify customers’ identity with Aadhaar card to ensure they are not police decoys.“Even after so many checks, the number of girls demanded will not be delivered. Usually, pimps get girls at a fixed rate of say Rs 2 lakh each. The pimps then try to convert this Rs 2 lakh into Rs 10 lakh. They refrain from supplying many girls at once because if 5-10 of them are caught in one police raid, their entire earning collapses,” says a police officer, who didn’t want to be named.Police officers say most of the flesh trade racket is operated from outside the state with Delhi and Mumbai being the hub of their operations.The National Crime Records Bureau data for 2016 shows that 86 girls, including two minors, were rescued by Goa police. During 2010 to 2013, around 300 girls were rescued in the state. In 2014, 53 girls were rescued, and in 2015 the number touched 84.Until last year, most of the victims rescued by Goa police were trafficked from Maharashtra and West Bengal. Victims who were foreigners were mainly from Russia, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan.Many tourists arrive in Goa lured by websites and social media forums promising escorts and call girls. Most pimps demand between Rs 10,000 and Rs 20,000 from prospective clients. The fee, though, remains negotiable.“There are also pimps who charge Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000, but these girls only fly down to Goa after a deal is struck,” says a police source.“Ninety percent of these cases end up with the tourist being cheated,” says an officer, and explains the gangs’ modus operandi: “The pimp points to a girl standing on a balcony who waves to the customer. The customer pays around Rs 4,000 to the pimp. The tourist is then asked to go up to the room. When he knocks, nobody opens the door. Hearing the banging on the door, those from neighbouring apartments come out (possibly planted by the pimps), and make a noise, forcing the tourist to leave.”Online forums like The International Sex Guide focus on exchange of contacts of pimps for tourists the world over. Testimonies about Goa confirm that most of the prostitution deals end up in cheating.“Websites promising escorts and call girls in Goa have increasingly attracted the wrong kind of tourists to the state. And there is little we can do about it. It takes us a month to get a website shut, but they open another within a day,” says a police officer.