Can India declare war against those victimizing these innocents?
Girls For Sale
Sex Slave Trade in India
July 16 � When Bharti Tapas was 14, she says
was sold into slavery, beaten and forced into
prostitution.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
One Man's Crusade
Intersection of Poverty and Sexism
"When I arrived at the brothel, I refused to do what they told me to
and they beat me and starved me for 10 days," says the softspoken
girl. "I thought I would rather kill myself than be forced to
work as a prostitute."
She was just a schoolgirl when she found herself in
Bombay, along with thousands of other
girls who are beaten, locked in tiny cages or hidden
in attics. Some are forced to have sex with
as many as 20 men a day under the watchful eyes of
madams and pimps.
"They are not given enough to eat. There are no
beds. They have to sleep on the floor.
Sometimes they are raped," says Ruchira Gupta, a
social worker and documentary filmmaker
who spent months investigating the horrors of
Bombay's brothels for her film The Selling of
Innocents.
It can take 10 years for a woman to buy her freedom
� if she doesn't first succumb to AIDS,
other STDs, complications from repeated abortions,
malnourishment, malaria, or TB. Most don't
make it to the age of 40.
"There's high rates of suicides among these girls
because they have no escape," says Gupta.
"Once or twice I know of girls who tried to get out
and they were beaten black and blue and
locked up all over again."
One Man's Crusade
Though prostitutes can be seen openly soliciting on
the streets in the red-light district, police
often pay no heed. Asked what role his department
plays in rescuing these girls, the Bombay
police commissioner says, "Prostitution is said to
be the oldest profession in this world � The
society has been accepting it, demanding it and then
encouraging it � We are not social
workers � we are law enforcers."
And yet, it is one civilian � and not the police �
who has taken on a personal and very
dangerous crusade to rescue abducted girls. So far,
Balkrishna Archarya, a Bombay
businessman, says he has rescued 187 underage girls.
One of those girls was Bharti, whom he saved with
the help of ABCNEWS' hidden cameras.
Bharti was then reunited with her family. Though she
still fears the stigma of being shunned by
her family and village for having worked as a
prostitute, she is back in school in West Bengal.
The Intersection of Poverty and Sexism
According to Gupta, it is often the parents who send
their children away, thinking they may be
going to do domestic work, when in fact they will
end up in prostitution.
"It is the intersection of poverty and sexism," says
Gupta, who recalls a father of four children
who worked as a bricklayer in Kathmandu. "At the
time I met him, one of his kids had
tuberculosis. The family was literally starving,"
she says. "He thought if he would let one child go
at least the other three would survive."
So he sold one of his girls for approximately $80.
What he did not know was that he had actually
sold his daughter to Gupta, who filmed the
transaction for her documentary. Gupta not only
supported the child whom he had sold, but also put
all four of his kids through boarding school in
Kathmandu.
Gupta then set up an organization called Apne Aap,
in an attempt to put an end to prostitution
and reduce HIV transmission.
"We are trying to create a system of support for
these girls who want to get out of prostitution,"
she says of her organization, which has reached out
to about 17,000 women. Based in
Bombay's red-light area, Apne Aap also seeks to
protect the daughters of prostitutes from being
sexually exploited.
"Literally we are buying time from the brothel
madams for the daughters of the prostitutes to stay
in school," she says.
ABCNEWS.com's Rebecca Raphael contributed to this
report.
What You Can Do
Ruchira Gupta is the founder of Apne Aap, the
initiative to end sex trafficking and support
marginalized women and girls.
Witness works to overcome political, economic, and
physical barriers, and to expose human
rights abuses to the world via television,
grassroots advocacy, and Internet broadcasting.
To contact Balkrishna Archarya, who was featured in
the Downtown segment for rescuing
Bharti and other underage girls forced into
prostitution: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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