, Tuesday April 10, 2007
Thousands of young girls are sold into prostitution in India every year. Many are abducted into the job when they reach puberty and never escape it.
But one mother has decided to fight back. Sky's India correspondent Alex Crawford has been to India's poorest region, Bihar, to join her attempt to save her daughter.
"Occasionally you meet people who make a real difference. In Meena, Ruchira and Tinku, the Sky News team met three.
Meena is a rarity. A woman sold into a modern day sex slave trade, still thriving in the economic phenomenon which is India, but who managed to break free.
Ruchira and Tinku are the two charity workers who she turned to for help - and who would challenge the system, pull the strings and fight for justice for Meena.
Meena - like so many others - found herself 'sold' into bonded labour while still a child.
For a few rupees she was bought by a family who put her into prostitution.
They were part of a secretive and little-known group called the Nutt community, where every female is put into prostitution.
Here a girl child is welcomed, unlike throughout the rest of India, because of the money she can earn the family by selling her body.
Grandmothers, mothers and their daughters are all involved in the family business. What they earn can keep an entire extended family alive.
All Nutt women are prostitutes
Meena remembers being locked in a completely dark room for what seemed like weeks.
If she resisted, she was beaten, starved, denied everything. There simply was no other way. She worked as a prostitute and she lived. If she didn't, she died.
All her earnings were handed to the brothel keeper and she was just one of a number of young women working in the house.
She was eventually 'married' to the son of the brothel keeper and bore him two children. One was a boy, the other, crucially a girl.
But Meena ran away. She managed to escape but she left behind her two young children. Her daughter was only five years old.
She managed to rebuild her life, married and had a further two children, both girls.
But she couldn't forget her other children. She knew her daughter Naina would be reaching puberty now.
For the past two years she has been travelling back to that house, the house where she was imprisoned, to try to rescue her daughter.
Each time she's been beaten by the brothel keepers and her own daughter has renounced her.
Naina won't even recognise her as her mother. She feels abandoned and she's told repeatedly her mother only wishes her harm, wants to sell her body too.
Sky's Alex Crawford
And then Ruchira and Tinku come into her life. Ruchira Gupta is a ferociously tenacious woman who founded the anti-trafficking non-governmental organisation Apne Aap.
Her organisation runs shelters for trafficked women, has creches for children of Nutt families and tries to educate and inform the women about alternatives.
Ruchira and her doughty co-worker Tinku Khanna are determined to help Meena and no amount of Indian bureaucracy or corruption is going to stand in their way.
First they have to persuade the Superintendent of Police in Katihar to mount a raid on the brothel. No easy task.
To mount a raid, one has to admit there is a problem and although the red light area is just a half a mile from the police station, the police deny its existence.
Secondly, once a raid has been organised, they have to ensure it's kept secret because a last-minute tip-off could mean the girls are spirited away.
Thirdly, they have to gain custody of the girl and any others found.
In the past, Ruchira's organisation has organised police raids only to discover the morning after that the girls have 'disappeared'; freed, due to a hefty bribe paid by the brothel keepers.
Naina is taken from the brothel
So, after hours of negotiations, a raid is organised. The Sky News team film everything - a presence Ruchira later says gives the NGO workers protection from both the brothel keepers AND the police.
They are far less likely to be attacked with a Western film crew rolling all the while.
Meena marches straight into the house and despite the pitch dark, manages somehow to hone in on her daughter who struggles to pull away from her.
She is pushed down the steps by a determined Meena and walked to a car by a sari-clad female police officer.
Two other young girls are picked up. They both say they were only visiting and don't live there.
One of them is pregnant and has a five-year-old daughter. All of them are loaded into the police truck.
This is just the beginning. Once at the police station, Ruchira and Tinku argue the young women should be held in separate rooms to the brothel keeper.
She is an elderly woman who is claiming to be Naina's grandmother. Her son, the real master of the brothel, has managed to escape.
Despite their prostestations, the girls are all kept at the police station for another four hours before they are allowed to see a doctor and be medically examined.
They are all showing signs of being drugged - a common way of subduing the girls and creating a dependency.
Naina seemed to be drugged
Meena refuses to be separated from her daughter and is constantly talking to Naina, trying to gain her confidence.
She doesn't even have any shoes and on the way to the hospital, as they walk through puddles of rainwater and mud, Meena hands over her own shoes.
At the hospital, Ruchira and Tinku are constantly on their phones talking to contacts in the state and district government urging help, calling for advice, begging favours.
They insist Naina is seen by a female doctor which necessitates another wait.
Two hours later, she is examined and the doctor pronounces, yes, she has suffered much internal abuse - probably for about a year.
She has a deep wound on her backside and swabs are taken for sexual diseases and Aids.
She is reluctant to talk but eventually tells the Sky producer Neville Lazarus she can remember the first day she was given a client.
He paid 3,000 rupees (under £30) considered a lot as she was a virgin.
What is remarkable about Naina is her lack of emotion. She has learned - through years of abuse - to mask her feelings.
She is only 14, still a child, yet there are no tears, there are no smiles, just blankness.
We spend the day in court with Ruchira and Tinku battling to get a magistrate to hear their case.
Naina re-united with her brother
They manage to get five minutes with the Chief Judicial Magistrate who shoos their lawyer out of court.
Ruchira tells him she won't leave until he hears her out. He is a wise man and does.
"You will get custody by half-past four," he says.
It proves an empty promise. The junior he delegates the task to says there is a powercut.
He can't see well enough to take the statement so it will have to be done in the morning.
Even so, everyone leaves with a sense of achievement. Meena believes she has won.
Naina is introduced to the two half-sisters she has never met before. Her brother is there too.
We think it is all over. We are so wrong. Next morning, the decision we think is a foregone rubber-stamped conclusion, goes against Meena and Apne Aap.
The Chief Judicial Magistrate has been informed Naina's father is contesting custody.
He says Meena is a prostitute so he is reluctant to handover custody of a young girl to her for fear she too will be put into the trade again.
He orders Naina be sent to a remand centre in Patna. The charity is distraught.
They fear she will be handed back to her father and disappear into the Bihar countryside again.
An agonising few days go by. Ruchira is pulling out all the stops. She simply won't give up.
One has to wonder what would happen if there wasn't a redoubtable charity fighting for this girl.
This story does have a happy ending with mother and daughter reunited but so many do not.
Thousands upon thousands of girls are on their own, imprisoned in sex slavery with no-one to help them."
But one mother has decided to fight back. Sky's India correspondent Alex Crawford has been to India's poorest region, Bihar, to join her attempt to save her daughter.
"Occasionally you meet people who make a real difference. In Meena, Ruchira and Tinku, the Sky News team met three.
Meena is a rarity. A woman sold into a modern day sex slave trade, still thriving in the economic phenomenon which is India, but who managed to break free.
Ruchira and Tinku are the two charity workers who she turned to for help - and who would challenge the system, pull the strings and fight for justice for Meena.
Meena - like so many others - found herself 'sold' into bonded labour while still a child.
For a few rupees she was bought by a family who put her into prostitution.
They were part of a secretive and little-known group called the Nutt community, where every female is put into prostitution.
Here a girl child is welcomed, unlike throughout the rest of India, because of the money she can earn the family by selling her body.
Grandmothers, mothers and their daughters are all involved in the family business. What they earn can keep an entire extended family alive.
All Nutt women are prostitutes
Meena remembers being locked in a completely dark room for what seemed like weeks.
If she resisted, she was beaten, starved, denied everything. There simply was no other way. She worked as a prostitute and she lived. If she didn't, she died.
All her earnings were handed to the brothel keeper and she was just one of a number of young women working in the house.
She was eventually 'married' to the son of the brothel keeper and bore him two children. One was a boy, the other, crucially a girl.
But Meena ran away. She managed to escape but she left behind her two young children. Her daughter was only five years old.
She managed to rebuild her life, married and had a further two children, both girls.
But she couldn't forget her other children. She knew her daughter Naina would be reaching puberty now.
For the past two years she has been travelling back to that house, the house where she was imprisoned, to try to rescue her daughter.
Each time she's been beaten by the brothel keepers and her own daughter has renounced her.
Naina won't even recognise her as her mother. She feels abandoned and she's told repeatedly her mother only wishes her harm, wants to sell her body too.
Sky's Alex Crawford
And then Ruchira and Tinku come into her life. Ruchira Gupta is a ferociously tenacious woman who founded the anti-trafficking non-governmental organisation Apne Aap.
Her organisation runs shelters for trafficked women, has creches for children of Nutt families and tries to educate and inform the women about alternatives.
Ruchira and her doughty co-worker Tinku Khanna are determined to help Meena and no amount of Indian bureaucracy or corruption is going to stand in their way.
First they have to persuade the Superintendent of Police in Katihar to mount a raid on the brothel. No easy task.
To mount a raid, one has to admit there is a problem and although the red light area is just a half a mile from the police station, the police deny its existence.
Secondly, once a raid has been organised, they have to ensure it's kept secret because a last-minute tip-off could mean the girls are spirited away.
Thirdly, they have to gain custody of the girl and any others found.
In the past, Ruchira's organisation has organised police raids only to discover the morning after that the girls have 'disappeared'; freed, due to a hefty bribe paid by the brothel keepers.
Naina is taken from the brothel
So, after hours of negotiations, a raid is organised. The Sky News team film everything - a presence Ruchira later says gives the NGO workers protection from both the brothel keepers AND the police.
They are far less likely to be attacked with a Western film crew rolling all the while.
Meena marches straight into the house and despite the pitch dark, manages somehow to hone in on her daughter who struggles to pull away from her.
She is pushed down the steps by a determined Meena and walked to a car by a sari-clad female police officer.
Two other young girls are picked up. They both say they were only visiting and don't live there.
One of them is pregnant and has a five-year-old daughter. All of them are loaded into the police truck.
This is just the beginning. Once at the police station, Ruchira and Tinku argue the young women should be held in separate rooms to the brothel keeper.
She is an elderly woman who is claiming to be Naina's grandmother. Her son, the real master of the brothel, has managed to escape.
Despite their prostestations, the girls are all kept at the police station for another four hours before they are allowed to see a doctor and be medically examined.
They are all showing signs of being drugged - a common way of subduing the girls and creating a dependency.
Naina seemed to be drugged
Meena refuses to be separated from her daughter and is constantly talking to Naina, trying to gain her confidence.
She doesn't even have any shoes and on the way to the hospital, as they walk through puddles of rainwater and mud, Meena hands over her own shoes.
At the hospital, Ruchira and Tinku are constantly on their phones talking to contacts in the state and district government urging help, calling for advice, begging favours.
They insist Naina is seen by a female doctor which necessitates another wait.
Two hours later, she is examined and the doctor pronounces, yes, she has suffered much internal abuse - probably for about a year.
She has a deep wound on her backside and swabs are taken for sexual diseases and Aids.
She is reluctant to talk but eventually tells the Sky producer Neville Lazarus she can remember the first day she was given a client.
He paid 3,000 rupees (under £30) considered a lot as she was a virgin.
What is remarkable about Naina is her lack of emotion. She has learned - through years of abuse - to mask her feelings.
She is only 14, still a child, yet there are no tears, there are no smiles, just blankness.
We spend the day in court with Ruchira and Tinku battling to get a magistrate to hear their case.
Naina re-united with her brother
They manage to get five minutes with the Chief Judicial Magistrate who shoos their lawyer out of court.
Ruchira tells him she won't leave until he hears her out. He is a wise man and does.
"You will get custody by half-past four," he says.
It proves an empty promise. The junior he delegates the task to says there is a powercut.
He can't see well enough to take the statement so it will have to be done in the morning.
Even so, everyone leaves with a sense of achievement. Meena believes she has won.
Naina is introduced to the two half-sisters she has never met before. Her brother is there too.
We think it is all over. We are so wrong. Next morning, the decision we think is a foregone rubber-stamped conclusion, goes against Meena and Apne Aap.
The Chief Judicial Magistrate has been informed Naina's father is contesting custody.
He says Meena is a prostitute so he is reluctant to handover custody of a young girl to her for fear she too will be put into the trade again.
He orders Naina be sent to a remand centre in Patna. The charity is distraught.
They fear she will be handed back to her father and disappear into the Bihar countryside again.
An agonising few days go by. Ruchira is pulling out all the stops. She simply won't give up.
One has to wonder what would happen if there wasn't a redoubtable charity fighting for this girl.
This story does have a happy ending with mother and daughter reunited but so many do not.
Thousands upon thousands of girls are on their own, imprisoned in sex slavery with no-one to help them."
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