Sunitha Krishnan, the relentless anti-trafficking campaigner who has rescued thousands of girls and women from the flesh trade on Thursday made a fervent appeal to people, asking them to set aside a rupee a day to be used for ‘security of the girl child and women’.
Accepting the Yudhvir Foundation Memorial Award, the 24{+t}{+h}in the series for her trail-blazing crusade against trafficking, she said she strived every moment to being about an attitudinal change in society, particularly those belonging to the middle and upper classes and even the rich, that their girls would be safe.
“Believe me, no one is safe. You have no clue as to how the traffickers coerce/entice your girls and women. They use every trick in the book and by the time the girl realises it, it is too late. Ever since ‘Prajwala’ the anti-trafficking organisation in 1996, I have rescued 15,000 girls,” Ms. Sunitha Krishnan said.
“Hardly seven per cent of the girls/women sold are rescued. What is more worrisome is that they end up with several health issues - reproductive organs infection and traumatic brain injury (TBI), apart from getting the dreaded HIV AIDS and getting addicted to alcohol, drugs and tobacco. Please help us locate and buy a two-acre piece of land in the twin cities for us to set up another facility. The one we run now is 70 km away from here,” she appealed, in a plaintive tone.
Zahid Ali Khan, of the Siasat Urdu daily and a trustee of Yudhvir Foundation, announced a donation of Rs. 1 lakh. Others present at the awards ceremony were Foundation chairman Narendra Luther who welcomed the gathering earlier, apart from its trustees Bajranglal Gupta, Pritam Singh, Muralidhar Gupta and Secretary Vinay Vir. The Yudhvir Foundation Awards were instituted in 1992 in the memory of Yudhvir who came to Hyderabad in 1949 and started the Daily Milap , first in Urdu in 1949 and in Hindi in 1966. His wife Seeta served as Rajya Sabha member for two terms.
