Porn racket probe widens, C-grade film director held from Surat

Gehana Vasisth at Quilla court in Fort on Wednesday. Pics/Suresh Karkera

The city Crime Branch arrested a C-grade film director from Surat on Wednesday as it widened the probe into a porn racket involving actress Gehana Vasisth. Its property cell has found that 15-20 small production houses have been providing sexually explicit contents to alleged big fish Umesh Kamat, the MD of VIAAN Industries, who is already under arrest.

Tanvir Hashmi, who was arrested from Surat, at Quilla court

The police picked 40-year-old Tanvir Hashmi, alias Tan, who has so far directed 8 films and was using his contacts to trick aspiring actresses into shooting x-rated videos. The Killa court remanded him in police custody till February 15.

"He was also having his own production and shooting pornographic videos which were then sent to UK-based Kernin Limited through Umesh Kamat," a Crime Branch officer said. The videos shot by Hashmi have been uploaded on apps like Eight Shot, Nuefliks, and a few porn portals. Kamat also worked as a consultant for Kernin.

Sources said groups in Mumbai and Gujarat shot sleazy videos before handing them over to Kamat. The cops exposed the racket with the arrest of Rowa Khan and four others who had used foreign IP addresses to upload sex videos on HotHit app. They then arrested Gehana Vasist on the charge of using her production house for the racket and getting the raunchy visuals uploaded on escapenow.tv.

The police said Vasisth also used to send the sexually explicit videos to Kamat to relay them to Kernin Limited for commercial use.

"It is a huge racket where aspiring actresses were forced to shoot pornographic videos on the pretext of providing them roles in web series and OTT-based films. We are exploring all angles and those behind this will surely face the law," Milind Bharambe, joint commissioner of Crime Branch, told mid-day.

Meanwhile, the police have got the custody of Vasisth till February 15. Rowa Khan and the four others arrested on February 5 are already in jail for 14 days.

20
Approx No. of groups in city, Gujarat in this racket