International Sex Workers’ Day is held to recognise the often violent and regularly exploited working conditions of sex workers around the world. The Quint is republishing this article from its archives, originally published on 9 May 2017.
Sitting at a health centre in Kolkata’s Sonagachi, South Asia’s largest red light district, I was trying to speak to girls to know more about their life. I asked:
Do you want to leave Sonagachi?
A girl replied spontaneously:
Society will not accept me, it will always label me as a prostitute. If I leave Sonagachi, where will I go?
About 17,000 sex workers live in Sonagachi.
An officer of Durbar Mahila Samannay Committe (DMSC), a non-governmental organisation working for sex workers’ rights and other developmental issues, says:
We have self regulatory board (SRB) in Sonagachi to stop the trafficking of girls from Nepal, Bangladesh and rural Bengal. Nearly 40 new girls come to this area each month.
He further added that even though there was a decline in the number of minor girls entering the trade, the number of ‘willing’ girls have increased.
Girls from South and North 24 Parganas district, the two parts of a former district in West Bengal, are trafficked mainly to Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. While some end up as domestic workers, or are forced to work in small industries, most are pushed into brothels.
How Cyclone Aila Changed Aaisha’s Life Forever
When her house was hit by cyclone Aila in 2009 in West Bengal’s Sunderbans, things for the 16-year-old Aaisha went from bad to worse. Sunderbans is one of the world’s regions that is hardest hit by climate change. The cyclone had left her family, which was already struggling with financial difficulty, in bad shape.
On 19 March 2016, lured by promises of marriage, Aaisha eloped with a boy from the village.
I loved him, but I lost face trusting the boy.
Soon after her marriage, she was taken to an area close to Kolkata where she stayed for two days, before going to Delhi. After reaching Delhi, her husband took her to GB Road, a large red-light district in the city. The boy left her that night and what followed next was torture, being subjected to hormonal injections, and sexual slavery.
Aaisha had no access to mobile phones. One day, however, she managed to call her family from the brothel. Her mother went to the police station, and finally CID (Crime Investigation Department) took her case and started investigations. CID reached Delhi and rescued Aaisha on 26 July 2016 by tracking her mobile number.
Aaisha now lives in her village. Her husband was arrested recently when he trapped another girl from the same village.
Aaisha’s parents are now looking for a groom for her and are ready to pay “Rs 40,000 and a pair of earrings.”
Pinky’s Struggle Against Stigma
In Canning, a town 60 kms from Kolkata, I found a little girl cutting small pieces of cloth as she learnt stitching along with five others. Fifteen-year-old Pinky had been trafficked at the age of 11. Born in a poor family in Kultoli in Sunderban, Pinky never went to school.
Her mother sent her to Delhi to look for work with a woman who lives in her village. After reaching Delhi, she was handed over to a placement agency following which Pinky worked as a domestic help for five families over a period of two years.
I had to work 16-20 hours daily and had to do all domestic work including cooking. They never paid me, my agent got money from them.
She was physically abused in the last three months of her stay in Delhi. One day, she was sexually abused, tied up in a sack and thrown into a pond. Delhi Police rescued her and sent her back to West Bengal.
It Took 3 Months to Convince Police to Rescue Her Daughter
About 25 km from Canning, in South 24 Parganas district, I met 21-year-old Rabeea in a village. She lives in a rented cramped room with her two-and-half-year-old twin daughters, Noor and Noopur.
When she was 17 years old, Rabeea fell in love with a man from Sunderbans and married him. Her parents gave him Rs 30,000 as dowry, but she was sent back when she got pregnant.
They (the boy’s family) took me to a diagnostic centre in Baraipur and the doctor told me I am pregnant with twin daughters.
She says following that, her husband and his family, started torturing her, leading her to return to her parents’ home.
After giving birth to her daughters, she started working as a Chikankari artist.
I have to work 12 hours a day. It takes two-three days to complete a saree and I get Rs 300 ruppes each.
Rabeea was trafficked in October 2016 along with one of her daughters, Noor.
My father was admitted in a hospital in Kolkata. I went to see him regularly. I met an woman there who offered me a job related to my work. She said Delhi pays better than Kolkata for Chikankari work.
Though, Rabeea says, she wasn’t convinced by her proposal, she nevertheless went to her home once.
She gave me a drink at her place due to which I lost consciousness. When I woke up, I realised I am on a train at the Asansol station, 250 km from Kolkata. Noor was with me. The woman told me we are going to Delhi and will be back after two days.
When Rabeea reached Delhi she was taken to GB Road accompanied by two men in a car. They locked her and her two-year-old daughter in separate rooms. Rabeea heard that the woman had sold her and Noor for Rs 70,000 and Rs 30,000 respectively. Though Rabeea managed to escape that night with the help of other girls, she could not take Noor with her.
Her complaint went unheeded at a Delhi police station. She returned to Kolkata and filed a complaint in Canning next. It was after three months that Rabeea, accompanied by police, managed to rescue Noor from the brothel.
During the three months, Noor faced inhuman torture. Currently deeply traumatised, Noor cannot stand without support due to serious injury to her legs. There are burn marks on her body and she cries whenever a stranger enters the room.
Aaisha, Pinky and Raabea are just the tip of the iceberg. There are more than 20,000 girls who went missing in 2016 from the state of West Bengal. The Ministry of Women and Child Development told the parliament that 19,223 women and children were trafficked last year against 15,448 in 2015, with the highest number of victims recorded in West Bengal. A rise of nearly 25 percent from the previous year, government data released on 9 March 2017.
How Does It Happen?
Santanu Sarkar, a volunteer of Birangana Mahila Samity, a non-governmental organisation based in Canning, says normally young boys in the village “trap girls with promises of marriage and once married, they move to Kolkata or any other city where the boy claims to have work.”
After the girl has been sold off to a brothel and forced into prostitution, her ‘husband’ goes back to Kolkata to target a different area in the Sundarbans.
To make the girls marry them, these men either threaten them with their compromising pictures or with suicide.
Now traffickers are employing young boys from the same villages itself who have better credibility.
Traffickers target poor, rural women who are lured with the promise of jobs and then sold into brothels.
Manturam Pakhira, Minister of state, Sundarban Affairs, Government of West Bengal claims that South 24 Parganas is the second largest district in West Bengal with cases of trafficking. However, it is much better now than in previous years as situation is under control and numbers have declined in 2016. He further added that:
I can’t agree with central government data that suggest we have topped the list in trafficking.
Why Is It On the Rise?
When Aila hit Sundarbans in 2009, it made the already weak economic situation worse. The climate change in the area has impacted livelihoods. As families became desperate for economic opportunities, they also became more willing to send their daughters out in search of job opportunities.
Amina Laskar, head of Birangana Mahila Samity, a non-governmental organisation based in Canning, says:
Due to high population among marginalised communities, each family has 5-8 children out of them 4-6 are girls. Literacy rate is poor among them. There are cases of school dropouts and early marriage in the Muslim community. Other bigger issue is lack of employment opportunities, they have no livelihood.
Minister Manturam Pakhira says:
We have launched a program called Swayamsidha for the betterment of minority girls. The number of girls dropping out of school has declined by fifty percent in the last six years.
Also, parents of trafficked girls often don’t report missing cases to the police due to fear of stigma.
On the other hand there are cases like Habibur Laskar whose daughter has been missing since 2015.
She says:
Police is reluctant to register a complaint. They say they have nothing to do if a girl voluntarily moved anywhere after the age of 18.
Recently, Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee set up a women police station in Canning. But there are allegations that particularly this police station asks for Rs 200 for registering a missing diary. Sometimes the officials also ask more for fuel charge if they visit their village. When I asked Minister Pakhira about this, he assured me he will look into it and inform the Superintendent of Police of the same.
Bengal’s international borders are also immensely porous. The state is 2,217 km from Bangladesh, 92 km from Nepal and 175 km from Bhutan, making it a human trafficking hub. The state registered for more than one third of India’s total number of victims in 2016.
The state does not have enough anti-trafficking units or even a dedicated phone line for missing girls. Atindra Nath Das, Regional Director, CRY (East) talking about the socio-economic reasons behind child trafficking, said:
Abject poverty, coupled with sheer lack of livelihood, accentuates the problem. On the one hand for the parents, there is the lure of money and the expectation that the child will lead a better life. On the other, there is the relief that there will be one less mouth to feed. These factors have boosted the rate of trafficking after natural disasters, when people have been pushed to extreme financial crisis. The geographic location of the state also increases the vulnerabilities of children to fall prey to trafficking.
Since the law does not differentiate between human trafficking and sex work, there are no formal guidelines for differentiating raid situations from rescue operations. There is no way to determine whether those involved were forced into the trade or were they simply cases of economic survival.
Atindra Nath Das, Regional Director, CRY (East) said:
Going by the recent trends revealed by NCRB data, West Bengal along with some other states continue to show worrying trends in cases related to missing children. There is a close linkage of missing children to organised crime. The magnitude of missing children in India and available on-ground evidence gathered by CRY over the last three and half decades indicate that large number of missing children are actually trafficked, kidnapped or abducted.
Elaborating further he said:
The Optional Protocol on Trafficking, which states that trafficking is an organised crime, has been recently signed by India (India signed the Protocol in December 2002, and ratified the same on 5th May 2011) thus acknowledging the link between missing and trafficked children.
Das believes these crimes should be prevented by all means. To achieve this, the most important step is to bring in the local governance, community, state mechanisms and the civil society all together and enforce an all-inclusive system, both in letter and in spirit.
Durbar Mahila Samannay Committe have patrols round the clock with each member responsible for visits to three to four brothels operating from multi-storeyed buildings to identify new girls. At night, volunteers walk along the narrow alleys of Sonagachi, keeping an eye out for newcomers.
An official of the DMSC says:
Newcomers are produced before the board, which consists of NGO members, doctors, elected members, professional counsellors and sex workers. They check newcomer’s credentials and reasons for being in the brothel are verified. X-rays of wrist, elbow and pelvis are taken to estimate their age. This model of anti-trafficking has shown successful results.
Their data claim that number of under-age girls and unwilling women in Sonagachi has declined.
However, there are some brothels inside Sonagachi where the “madam” in charge does not present newcomers to DMSC’s regulatory board.
Sanjeev, a middle-aged pimp in Sonagachi, says that minors have higher rates and in case of a raid, the ‘madam’ can manage the police. Besides, he adds:
Durbar doesn’t have access to all brothels, it’s not possible. We know tricks how to manage it all.
As the sun sets, Sonagachi comes to life, like a small city inside a bigger one. Girls darken their lipsticks and dress up for clients.
I met Anita standing on a street, waiting for her first “customer”. She has been working there for the last eight years. Her customers are mainly young men, taxi drivers, migrant labourers, and sometimes even married men. According to Anita, competition is high nowadays, everyday new girls are coming in in a brothel where the owner cannot even accommodate separate rooms.
When the police raid the brothels, our madam slips them money and offers her best girls to them. It is the rule of Songachi.Anita
(Tanmoy Bhaduri, a freelance news and documentary photographer based in Kolkata, India. He is currently working for Thomson Reuters Foundation. He has previously worked for Pacific Press Agency, NurPhoto Agency and The Times of India. He covers under-reported issues on development, human trafficking, women and child rights, insurgencies, climate change, land rights & natural disaster.)
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