 "Triveni Acharya")
They come to the city in search for a good life, a better livelihood. Instead, they end up dancing in bars and entertaining clients in dingy cabins. They endure daily abuse and violence until many come to believe that life has little else to offer them. Helping these victims of human trafficking isn’t easy either. The majority are illiterate, some underage. Brothel keepers keep them under close guard; pimps keep most of their earnings. A handful of volunteers with spycams brave the violence and criminality of the red light district, posing as clients. Then, in the dim light of an anonymous cabin, they counsel girls, telling them that a better life awaits them outside. A blown cover could mean getting thrashed by the brothel’s bouncers, or worse. To rescue a single girl could costs anywhere between Rs 25,000 to Rs 50,000. Many girls are too far gone for them to help — they either relapse into their old ways or disappear completely. “Yet each girl that we at Rescue Foundation manage to free, motivates us to carry on,” says Triveni Acharya, president of this Mumbai-based NGO that has been rescuing human trafficking victims from the sex trade since 2000.
Triveni Acharya, president, Rescue Foundation
At the centre in Mumbai’s Kandivali, I watch as girls sit with an instructor and make jewellery. Others get ready to leave for a hotel where they’re undergoing training in hotel management. A young mother nurses her child, while some girls get busy preparing lunch for everyone. I hear the story of Karishma, who was rescued in Pune in 2008 and came to Rescue Foundation thereafter. She did a course in nursing and got a job at a local hospital, a far cry from her earlier life. Another girl, Sheila, who was rescued in Mumbai in 2013, also did a nursing course and now works in a hospital in the same red light area where she once worked. Now, she participates in raids and helps rescue more sex trafficking victims from there. “Given the circumstances from which we rescue these girls, these are astonishing achievements,” says Acharya.
Acharya’s crusade against human trafficking began when she, a journalist, visited Mumbai’s infamous red light district, Kamathipura and was moved by the plight of the women she met. Soon after, her husband’s co-worker enlisted their help in rescuing a sex worker he was in love with. “Using my contacts with the police, we organised a raid,” she says. To their surprise, instead of just that one girl, 14 decided they wanted freedom from a life that they had been forced into. “We went to Nepal to repatriate them with their families, and were anguished by the stories they told us,” she says. Thus, Rescue Foundation was born in 2000, and their first shelter opened in 2003.
“Even as we continue to rescue more and more girls from brothels, we need to focus on their rehabilitation,” says Acharya. Her dream is to create group housing for trafficking victims, so that they can support each other in their path to normalcy. “We also need funds to support the swelling numbers of girls with HIV/AIDS, as well as to offer better psychological counselling to enable these victims to face the world again,” she says.
Meanwhile, a young girl looks out of the window at the Kandivalicentre, withdrawing hurriedly as she catches the eye of a passerby. I muse that the task of rehabilitating victims like her will be steeply uphill — but as Rescue Foundation has shown, certainly not impossible.
For more, visit www.rescuefoundation.net or their Facebook page Next up, a unique social experiment on gender equality in Delhi, that is encouraging women to break the shackles of outdated rules they are expected to live by
