So-called video tours turn into V.D. tours

Press, 19 February 1986, Page 7

So-called video tours turn into V.D. tours

By

DEVRAJ RANJIT,

of Agence France-Presse, through NZPA New Delhi Couriers sent by racketeers to the Far East to bring back video-cassette recorders are returning with more than V.C.R. units, doctors say. Many are also carrying the venereal disease herpes. Dr Abdul Hameed Rizvi, a skin and venereal disease expert at the AllIndia Institute of Medical Sciences, the country’s largest medical facility, reported a sharp rise recently in the incidence of herpes. “Frankly we are now panicky with lines of patients at the institute and my department understaffed,” he told Agence France-Presse. “I am identifying at

least four cases every day as positive and they all seem to be of the FarEastern strain,” the doctor said.

They appeared to have originated in Hong Kong, Singapore or Bangkok. Dr Rizvi linked many venereal disease cases to a system used by racketeers to circumvent Customs by bringing in sought-after video recorders through Indians serving as couriers on socalled “video tours” abroad. “I would call them V.D. tours, not video tours,” the specialist said. The courier system took advantage of the fact that Indians who have not travelled abroad for two years are allowed SUSSOO ($935) in foreign exchange and can claim a video recorder as part of a baggage allowance exempt from stiff customs duties.

The organiser gives the rupee equivalent to a courier who has not used his foreign exchange and provides a paid holiday in return for a V.C.R. from abroad. V.C.R.’s command a high premium on the local market where standard models easily fetch 15,000 rupees ($2242), so that the cost of travel is more than covered.

Vijay Chopra spent two days in Singapore recently and returned with a V.C.R. Like other couriers, he could not have made the trip himself. “The operators arrange everything,” Mr Chopra, aged 26, said. “You just hand over the SUSSOO ($935) in foreign exchange to the operators, have a nice time, and fetch the V.C.R. through the customs, declaring it as personal.”

Customs regulations which prohibit the resale of the V.C.R. are no real problem, Mr Chopra said. “I can always give it to a friend who can ‘loan’ me some money.” “Anyway, finding the customer and so on is the operator’s headache. My job is over as soon as I pass the customs counter.” But all too often that was when the medical authorities’ job began, said Dr Rizvi. There was no way of determining how

widespread the danger was since many victims tended to visit “quacks” to treat sexual problems.

Diagnosis was hampered by inadequate facilities and the fact that the most common symptoms of herpes — clusters of boils in males and white discharges in females — could easily be mistaken for symptoms of other diseases.

Dr Rizvi said the cold weather from November to February stimulated the herpes virus with “another activator being stress.” He said that while the Far-Eastern strain was identified this year, herpes was already known in India. But victims tended to be “swingers” or teenagers from well-to-do families who preferred treatment by private physicians rather than at the free All India Institute.

Dr Ashok Aggarwal, a doctor at a leading private clinic specialising in skin and venereal disease, confirmed that young people “admitting to casual relationships with tourists” have been approaching him.

Dr Aggarwal said the disease had severe psychological side-effects: .Psy-cho-social morbidity featuring diminished selfesteem, social isolation and a sense of loss of control due to capricious recurrences,” he said. Authorities, meanwhile,

looked to tighter Customs regulations that came into effect recently to cut down on the thriving trade in videos. These include a sharply reduced baggage allowance and higher duties.

This would mean an end to a lucrative trade in video equipment which began in 1982 when Customs regulations were relaxed to allow better promotion of the Asian Games.

News reports then said that the sharp Indian demand for video equipment that year had provided brisk business for shops in Far Eastern capitals.