On a late afternoon of 2012, a few weeks shy of her 15th birthday, Amoli (name changed) stepped out of her blue-walled, thatched house near one of the tea gardens in Jalpaiguri with two friends. The teen usually preferred staying home but on that fateful day, she stepped out with friends she had known since childhood. After a few hours, her friends returned home but Amoli didn’t. She didn’t come home that night, nor the next morning, nor the day after.
“The agent sold her and ran away. Whenever I think of her, my heart sinks,” sobs her mother. Amoli has been missing for more than five years and is believed to have been sold to a brothel in Delhi. The police is no closer to knowing what happened to her. The prime suspect was the man she met, who skipped town days after her disappearance.
Gone girls
But Amoli — Priceless, is not only about her disappearance. Presented by Culture Machine, it takes a look at the commercial sexual exploitation of children in India.
The feature, directed by National Award-winning team of Avinash and Jasmine Kaur Roy, threads together spine-chilling personal accounts of survivors of the trade, and explores the inner workings of this lucrative business valued at approximately $32 billion. “During our research, someone told us of this girl who had gone missing from the tea gardens,” says Avinash. “But when we went looking for her, we realised it isn’t a standalone incident; every third or fourth house had a girl missing.”
Trapped till rescue
Amoli opens to grainy footage of a police raid on a brothel in 2016 where minor girls are found huddled inside a makeshift shaft. They refuse to let go of each other until they are assured of their safety. Every year, thousands of girls are rescued in such raids and sent to shelter homes.
“We started our research at the shelter homes in Maharashtra and spoke to the women there,” says Jasmine, who, along with Avinash, has also made a film on trafficking for U.N. Women South Asia.
There they met Soni, who was raped by her brother-in-law at an early age and trafficked at 15. “I used to cry for help but my family ignored my cries. He got me pregnant, but no one believed he could do such a thing,” she says in the documentary.
Soni gave birth to a baby girl who was sold for ₹1,200 by her family. “I placed her in the crib and went to the washroom. When I returned, she was gone,” she says. A few months later, her family sold her to a brothel.
Owing to the covert nature of this industry, it’s hard to quantify the scale of the problem. According to data released by the National Crime Records Bureau in 2016, there have been 9,034 cases of child-trafficking in India, of which almost 3,113 cases were from West Bengal alone.
“While North 24 Parganas and the Bangladesh border have always been a hotbed for trafficking, not many are aware that even the tea gardens up north have seen rising incidents. Also, a lot of cross-border trafficking takes place in the Indo-Nepal border,” says the Film Institute alumni, explaining how the minors’ details are forged in the documents. “There is a treaty between India and Nepal, and police cannot legally stop anyone from entering or leaving.”
Caught young
Preeti, a middle-aged sex worker talks of how the demand for young girls never wanes. “Clients prefer young girls and if I were to bring them customers, I would then demand 50% of their earnings, as everything has a price,” she says.
Preeti is small fry in the entire operation and herself a victim of the trade. “At the age of eight, she was married and when she was 14, her father-in-law raped her. Her husband sold her for ₹10,000 to a brothel in Delhi,” explains Jasmine.
Commercial sexual exploitation of children is a demand-driven phenomenon, facilitated and perpetuated by those who demand such girls and the nexus of traffickers who supply. The culprits usually get away because the conviction rate in child-trafficking cases is less than 30%.
As Ashok Rajgor, Chief Investigative Officer at Rescue Foundation, sums it up, “Till you convict the customer, the demand won’t subside and neither will the supply.” Till then, there will be many Amolis.
The Mumbai-based freelancer writes on films, food and everything in between.
