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Flight Attendant Prostitution Ring Busted in India

March 2, 2010 at 4:19 PM | by | Comments (0)

If you looked at those racy pictures of British Airways flight attendants and cattily thought to yourself "wow, those girls are acting like total whores," you might have been closer to the truth than you knew. The reputation of the airlines' hostesses is set to grow even saltier, as Indian police begin to unravel a $10 million high-end prostitution racket that employed as many as 200 local students and flight attendants.

The only thing that could improve this story, which comes to us via our good friend Neal Ungerleider at True/Slant, is if the pimp was a self-styled "Hindu God-Man" with over 100,000 followers, deep connections to leading Indian politicians, and an underground labyrinth brimming with drugs and porn. And wouldn't you know it, that turns out to be exactly true.

Police say that Shiv Myra Dwivedi, a Hindu swami out of South Delhi, has been running the prostitution ring since 1999. Police nabbed him along with a second pimp and six prostitutes while they were negotiating a deal with some locals. No trouble is anticipated in unraveling the racket, since a search of Dwivedi's Temple revealed an underground tunnel network with a bunch of documents and six detailed diaries. The tunnel entrances opened up into the meditation room, natch.

Five of the women gave fake Indian names and the sixth—identified by officials only as "Ms. Julie"—apparently didn't even try. Since it's been confirmed that one of the alleged prostitutes was a British Airways stewardess, we're guessing that's probably her. A hostess from Indian airline Jagson was also among the six, reinforcing how even in today's challenging profit environment there are opportunities for airline cooperation. So while in most ways this is just a really creepy story about how holy men can lead hundreds of thousands of people astray, from a certain angle it's also an important metaphor for airline industry dynamics.

[Photo: British Airways History Museum]

Related Stories:
· Hindu ‘God-Man’ in British Airways prostitution scandal [Neal Ungerleider at True/Slant]
· British Airways [Jaunted]
· Sex Travel [Jaunted]

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