The 12-year-old was working as a domestic servant in Calcutta when the homeowner
told her about a good-paying job at his sister's house in India's capital. But
instead, she was sold to a brothel owner and forced into prostitution for
little more than a place to sleep and the occasional meal.
Her ordeal lasted four years and Meena, now 21, says it left her 'a very angry
person.'
"The anger comes suddenly," says Meena, who asked that her full name not be
used because of the stigma associated with her past.
Beneath the surface of India's rapid economic development lies a problem rooted
in the persistent poverty of hundreds of millions of Indians. Rights activists
say thousands of poor women and girls are forced into prostitution every year
after being lured from villages to cities on false promises of jobs or
marriages.
Much of the attention on human trafficking focuses on the estimated 600,000 to
800,000 people - about 80 percent of them women or girls - who are trafficked
across international borders every year, and, in many cases, forced to work as
prostitutes or virtual slaves who perform menial tasks.
But those numbers don't include victims trafficked within their own countries -
a problem that has long plagued India, a country large and diverse enough that
traffickers can take victims from one place to another hundreds of miles away
where a different language is spoken and there's little chance of the women
finding their way back home.
"This is a challenge to India's contention that it is both democratic and
modern," said Ruchira Gupta, founder of the anti-trafficking group Apne Aap.
"In this day and age, when democracy is supposed to exist in India.. ..we have
so many slaves."
The secrecy of the underground business makes it difficult to track, and the
estimates for the numbers of India's victims each year vary widely.
But this much is known: the government estimates there are 3 million sex
workers in India, at least 40 percent of them children. And thousands of them
are believed to have been unwittingly lured into the work by traffickers,
rights activists say.
Most of the girls come from India's poorer states. A family member or friend
approaches the girl's parents about a well-paying job in the city or the chance
for marriage with little or no need to pay a dowry.
In some cases, parents sell the girls directly. Prices range from several
hundred to several thousand dollars.
Traffickers are rarely caught. The State Department said in an annual report on
human trafficking last year that India's law enforcement response to the
problem was weak and prosecutions rare.
In Mumbai, which has the highest concentration of sex workers, only 13
traffickers were arrested in 2005, and none were convicted, according to the
State Department. The situation was similar in other cities.
"One of the best ways to prevent trafficking is to increase convictions of
trafficking ¡V and this is not happening," said Gupta. "Women are being rounded
up for soliciting in a public place, but there are very few arrests of men who
are running the whole trade - the buyers, the pimps, transporters."
Deepa Jain Singh, secretary for India's Ministry of Women and Child
Development, said the government is 'trying to do more' about the problem of
sex trafficking, but he declined to specify what steps were being taken.
What becomes of the girls? There are many pitfalls. HIV infections among sex
workers are widespread in a country with an estimated 5.7 million people
infected with the disease.
And women who manage to escape are often rejected by their families, leaving
them poor and alone in a society where family means almost everything.
Meena's childhood before being sold into prostitution was filled with long days
of domestic work in the rural eastern state of Jharkhand. She received little
or no pay, she said, but "I was so poor, I could not leave."
At the urging of her mother, she moved to Calcutta for what she was told would
be a paid maid's position. When her boss then sent her to New Delhi, Meena
never found out the price she brought on the human trafficking market.
She was rescued from the brothel by STOP, an anti-trafficking group founded in
1998. She lives in the group's shelter on the western edge of New Delhi, a
large two-story white house with long hallways situated amid the farm fields
that spread out from the city's edge. There are vegetable gardens, and the
women who live there embroider and cook for each other.
It's run by Roma Debabrata, a 59-year-old academic who founded STOP. Two years
ago, the group built the 22-room shelter where more than 40 women attempt to
rebuild their lives.
Debabrata's goal is to make the girls and women in the house function 'like a
normal family.'
"I don't expect miracles from them. They're very normal people and they're
being nurtured here in very natural surroundings," she said. "We want them to
go from victim to survivor to activist. It's a long journey. You're completely
drained out."
The organization has built an information network, with tips called in to a hot
line operated out of an unmarked office. The staffers work with local police to
raid brothels and rescue endangered girls.
Some are resettled with their families or married, aided by STOP's counseling
services.
But for many, moving back to their villages is not an option.
"I love to be here because I've got my mother, my father, my siblings," said
Meena, referring to her house mates. "I never feel this is someone else's home.
It is my own."
Associated Press
