India Struggles Against Trafficking

Many Women, Girls Sold Into Prostitution

NEW DELHI -- Meena discovered she had been sold by her boss while riding in an auto-rickshaw headed to New Delhi's red-light district.

The 12-year-old was working as a domestic servant in Kolkata when the homeowner told her about a well-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," said 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. In many cases, they are 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, meaning On Our Own. "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 estimates for the number 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.