Two girls alleged that they were asked to appear for a shoot for an advertisement but when they reached the place, they were threatened and forced to appear nude before the camera.
Amidst the high-profile porn racket case involving Raj Kundra being probed by the Mumbai Police, the police in West Bengal, too, have launched a crackdown on porn film racket active here and are probing if the rackets in Bengal had any connection with Kundra’s business.
Officers from the New Town police station arrested model and actor Nandita Dutta on Thursday along with one of her alleged cohorts, Mainak Ghosh, for forcing others to agree to pornographic shooting. New Town is a satellite township in the eastern fringes of Kolkata.
The arrest took place after two women lodged separate complaints alleging that they were forced to take part in pornographic shootings and those videos were released on various porn sites recently. The police later identified a hotel in the New Town area where such shootings were happening.
The complainants alleged that they were asked to appear for a shoot for an advertisement for sarees but when they reached the place, they were threatened and forced to appear nude before the camera. They were assured that the videos will not be released in India.
“We have got leads that some of the videos shot here were uploaded on an OTT platform Kundra was associated with. That angle is being probed,” a senior officer of Bengal police said.
One of the complainants had named Dutta and Ghosh as part of the shooting team. The police are also looking out for the videographer and make-up artists of those shoots.
“This is the beginning of the investigation. We expect the network to be wider. Therefore, more arrests can be expected in the coming days,” said a senior officer of West Bengal police who did not want to be identified.
According to a police officer, the information they have got in investigations so far leads them to believe the aspiring models who used to come for shooting were initially coaxed to take part in “bold photoshoots” and later those photos were used to force them to act in porn films, mostly with the promise that the videos were made for release abroad.