WHAT do you do in the hotel?We play games, gora baba and gori bai take photographs and show us films.What kind of films?On their machine.Do you like the films?(Silence.)— a nine-year-old girl’s police statement Wilhelm Albin Marty paid exquisite attention to detail. His planner contained neat lists of names of little girls to be picked up daily between December 12 to 29, 2000. For each day except Christmas Day. He booked a double room (Number 108) at The Resort, Malad, for ‘‘two adults and two children’’, though the couple flew in solo on separate days from Burglen, Switzerland. And since street kids can’t pad around barefoot in a five-star hotel, the greying couple crammed their overnight bags with kiddie sandals. They also carried T-shirts, undergarments, swimming costumes, stockings, all for girls below the age of 10. Not forgetting teddy bears, dolls, chocolates and nuts to make the the hired-car trips around Colaba and the Gateway of India worthwhile. And for themselves, they carried lots of condoms, sprays and a medicine kit. When personnel of the social service branch of the Mumbai police and at least two witnesses used a duplicate key to raid the first floor room around 4 pm on December 16, 2000, the sauve general manager of a pharmaceutical company was not alone. The police and witnesses claim Wilhelm was in bed, naked, with two cowering girls aged eight and nine. Loshiar Lili Marie Marty, his 56-year-old wife, ‘‘was standing nude, her back to the door, camera in hand’’. Seconds after the police entry, Wilhelm pulled out a strip of white paper from under a pillow and chewed it until they forced him to spit it out. Also in the room was the Martys’ black laptop. Clicks on icons with user-friendly names like GAMES, IND99, IND00, THAI98 and THAI99 revealed girlie porn pictures and one-minute blue flicks on Photoshop. THE LAW A Small Price to PayRs 5,000 each. This is the compensation the Martys will pay the young victims. And what did the police find during the raid on the Martys’ room? A Rolex watch, 7,060 Swiss francs, US $245 plus Rs 11,000 in cash. Indian law shys away from calling paedophilia paedophilia. Besides destruction of evidence (Marty chewed up a piece of paper when the police barged into their room), the Martys were charged with kidnapping, wrongful confinement, sale of obscene material, procuring minor girl and subjecting her to unnatural lust, assault on woman with intent to outrage modesty, selling pornographic material and selling or exhibiting obscene material to a young person. ‘‘Unfortunately, the Indian Penal Code does not provide for child sexual abuse. The maximum punishment they faced under the IPC was 10 years, but, in view of their age, the court reduced it to seven (of which they have already served two since their arrest),’’ says additional public prosecutor R V Kini. ‘‘The cumulative fine of Rs 16,000, too, is just not enough.’’ The compensation awarded also worries child rights activists. ‘‘No judge had presided over such a case in India earlier, there was no precedent to fall back on. We are worried that the compensation of Rs 5,000 per victim may set a standard for future cases,’’ says Altaf Shaikh of NGO Sathi, which will receive the money on the victims’ behalf and spend it on their education, as directed by court. Activists also point out that there are no laws for child rights violations. The line separating child pornography and paedophilia is also a blur. Most activists and lawyers stick to defining a paedophiliac as an adult who habitually seeks the company of a child/children to gratify his sexual needs. ‘‘Our rape laws define violations only against women. There is no law defining sexual offences against minors, especially males, making it difficult to prove paedophiliacs guilty,’’ says Sangeeta Punekar, of the Forum Against Child Sexual Exploitation.All the above facts, say the police and child activists, are true. It’s just a bundle of lies, say the Martys. ‘‘The witnesses lied. They were tutored by the police. The porn print-outs were doctored,’’ says defence lawyer Francis Saldanha (see box). But on March 29, two years after the daylight raid and two months after charges were framed against the Martys, the police won the day when a sessions court sentenced the couple to seven years RI and a total fine of Rs 16,000. But the story doesn’t end there because the police left many questions unanswered. And while the investigation and speedy trial may set precedents, India continues to slumber on legislation for child sexual abuse. ‘‘We were under immense pressure since we were raiding the room of a foreigner, protected by so many laws, only on the basis of a tip-off. What if we had found nothing?’’ asks sub-inspector Nandkumar Gopale. ‘‘The child witnesses’ statements proved the charges of unnatural lust and kidnapping.’’ Remarkably, none of the 21 witnesses in the case turned hostile. The child victims confessed that the fair uncle-aunty would lure them into their car with generous gifts of chocolates, toys and clothes. Then they would take them to a hotel ‘‘very far away,’’ where they would watch films on a laptop and do as the couple bid, communicating mostly through gestures. ‘‘It was traumatic. I would recoil on seeing the photographs in court. The youngest girl in the photos was just five. One girl present on the day of the raid was in pictures dating back to 1999,’’ one witness told this reporter. A prime witness claims that some photographs presented as evidence show the couple striking poses as well. ‘‘In many photos the couple were nude and semi-nude. Even colour photocopies were gruesome to identify.’’ The child specialist who questioned the victims reports, with reference to one case, that ‘‘the interview clearly suggests that the foreign couple kidnapped her, took her to a hotel and exploited her sexually which produced a state of extreme embarrassment and shock in her, making her uncomfortable to discuss it.’’