- Access: Getting to the victim and the crime scene has to be easy. Some gay men will take extraordinary risks in their quest for sex—and even just company. So it's not unusual for a man to install multiple alarm systems at home to invite someone he has known for half an hour into his bedroom. This is a level of access that is often denied to everybody but close friends and family. For a crook, this is like being gifted the keys to the bank.
- Reward: Nefarious activity is best when it generates the maximum bang for the buck. A gay man's house offers plenty of it because, as marketers in the West have known for years, gay men at a given income level tend to be more flush than their straight counterparts. They can buy themselves a lot of goodies on what their straight mates lay out on children and spouses. Goodies that are easy picks—the effort involved is trivial compared to the average burglary. One investment banker woke up after a steamy night in Mumbai with a taxi driver to find he had been relieved of an expensive Pucci watch.
- Retribution: As in any conservative society, Indian gays are fairly closeted, and don't enjoy an understanding societal and legal environment. In all of criminal activity, there may be no other avenue where the victim is less inclined to complain in public. For instance, it is practically impossible to find a cop who will not state for the record that homosexual behaviour is an illegal perversion because he would essentially then be questioning the infamous Article 377 of the ipc. "In our thoughts and culture, it is not normal or acceptable to be gay," agrees a senior Delhi police officer. The law clearly has its limitations (see main story), and in any case several scams involve blackmail with the threat of disclosure to family and colleagues and even planting evidence on a victim. Small wonder then that the likelihood of reporting a crime drops to somewhere near zero.