Tape ID: UW9-online picture
Subject: INDIA LAND OF MISSING CHILDREN
Date: Recorded: February 4 2005
Sound: Camera mic on track 1 + radio mic on track 2
Time Code Picture Comments
10:00:0010:00:0710:00:16 Pre-title + title COMM: Indian police raid a Bombay brothel.The madams are outragedSam Sync: “OK I’ll get out of the way”.COMM: This is the end of a month long channel four investigation. PTC: We’ve come into the roof of the brothel we’ve raided.BalKrishna Sync: Come. Come.COMM: These teenage girls are victims are one of the fastest growing industries in the world – sex traffick.
10:00:5010:01:11 COMM: India’s North East is famed for it’s tea estates and Himalayan views. It’s the ancient cross roads of trading routes between Bhutan, Nepal, India and Bangladesh.And the town of Siliguri has always been at the hub of international trade.These days that’s nothing to be proud of.
Sam PTC in car PTC: According to the UN’s latest figures, about 30,000 children are trafficked into Calcutta and a lot of them come through Siliguri
10:01:24 COMM: Some are local girls, abducted from their families. Bhoruka a self-help group is fighting to rescue children from the slave traders.
10:01:38 Sam talking to Thamali and pointing at photos Sam Sync:Thamali, what is this? A sort of rogues gallery? This is the first girl you rescued. She is still missing, she is still missing – eh – rescued, rescued, rescued.
10:01:53 Sam summary PTC: Thamali is saying that the problem of trafficking shown by this little board here in one village in Northern India that the trafficking problem is getting worse. Mainly because people don’t understand and they are naïve villagers often illiterate, hand over their girls into marriage or are taken away to work and disappear and they are simply traded in the big cities as prostitutes.
10:02:17 GV driving shots COMM: In poor families girls are often seen as a burden who’ll need a dowry when they marry. It can make sense to send them away to work. Many don’t come back.
10:02:28 Sam PTC following girl PTC: This is Rinky. She is from a family that has a missing daughter, one of about 30,000 people who are going missing in this area every year.
10:02:40 Sam talking to father Sam Sync: The reason we came is that, we heard that – ehm -
Father Narurai
10:01:48 Sam summary over pictures of Pinky photograph Sam Sync: Narurai here says that his daughter Pinky was 13 when his brother turned up at their hut with a contractor, a labour contractor, offering her work in New Delhi. 15 days went by and then they got a phone call saying that she just ran away.He doesn’t believe that they allowed her to run away. He believes that they just sold her.
10:03:0710:03:15 Poverty Pictures COMM: The poor are easy prey for the traffickers.The victims and their parents suffer an unending agony - Chermuti Burhan stopped me on the street.
10:03:27 PTC: Chirunti has just run up to me embarrassingly enough just kissed my feet. She’s begging for help because she’s lost two daughters one aged ten and one aged eleven. The eleven year old disappeared when she was sent to sell milk in the market place and two years later the same thing happened to the younger sister who was then ten years old she hasn’t heard from her daughters at all. This is really the land of missing children.
10:03:53 COMM: It’s not just local children at risk. the trade is international.Worldwide, traffickers add three million women and children to an ocean of sex slaves each year. A quarter of a million are smuggled through south Asia. SILIGURI’S border police STRUGGLE to stem the tide.
Sam at Jalpaiguri Border Checkpoint How do you tell who is a trafficked child, who is a normal child?
Police officer – yah – Specially from reliable sources. Sources who inform that they may arrive.
Sam Ah – so you get advance warnings may be from the Nepal side – or from the other side – or Bangladesh side
Police officer Especially from Bangladesh side
10:04:30 COMM: Girls are lured into slavery with promises of jobs in the big cities or simply kidnapped and lost to the families. But sometimes, a family fights back.
Sam PTC on the way to see Pratima in Siliguri PTC: I am with Probat. He is a security guard at the local stadium. Now his daughter was trafficked all the way to Bombay. He got together with the local police and actually rescued her and three other girls and another 13 who were released into the custody of the Bombay police.Your daughter is here?
Sam talking to Probat looking at trafficker photos Sam Sync: So this, this couple here are the people that trafficked your daughter to Bombay – Mumbai – Bombay.How long was your daughter Pratima, how long was she kept in Bombay?
Father Probat 9 months
Sam How old was she?
Father Probat 14 years old
Sam meeting Pratima Here she is
10:05:43 Pratima arriving COMM: Pratima was drugged with spiked mango juice, raped in Calcutta and then sold to a brothel in Bombay.
Sam Sync: Hi, my name’s Sam.
Sam question Did they beat you a lot? Were they violent with you?
Translator Almost everybody used to beat her
Sam question And did you get to keep any of the money?
Translator No
Sam question Did you ever ask for help from the customers?
Translator They used to say they will kill her if she did some thing like this
Sam If you try to escape they will kill you
WA of interview setup
Sam summary PTC: Patima had an extraordinary escape because some people tracked her down to Bombay and approached the brothel keeper and the brothel keeper let her go. And she was able to be returned here to her family.
Sam question If you met this trafficker what would you do?
Father Probat I would kill him
10:06:49 GV train Music COMM: Pratima’s father gave me some leads. I decided to see if I could follow her route and retrace the ordeal of one victim of an industry that rivals drugs and guns.
Sam PTC in train PTC: Stolen out of their fields or sold into slavery from the slums the trafficked girls from West Bengal and Bihar find their way onto these trains, these commuter trains down into Calcutta where they will begin their lives as sex slaves.
GV train arrival + taxi mess Music COMM: More than five million people struggle to get by in this swampy morass of a city.A girl smuggled into sex slavery can expect very little help here.Here the tarts have very hard hearts.
10:07:43 Sam PTC PTC: I have come to Malka’s house. As she is a madam I try to get an understanding how the sex trade really works. Why there is such a huge demand for girls – especially underage girls.
10:07:55 Sam + client COMM: I had a chat with one of the brothel regulars, closely supervised by Malka from Durba, the sex workers union.
10:08:01 Sam PTC PTC: This is sheik Mohamed Enam he is a client – and how often do you come here?
Client Three times a week
Sam Do you ever see any girls here who are under 18?
10:08:16 COMM: Woops – wrong question.
10:14:58 Sam summary Malka interrupted and said since DURBA her organisation is working here there are no underage girls. But she does point out that women as young as 12 get married in India. Also the official legal limit is 18. And in a society like that it’s inevitable that underage girls can end up in prostitution. Although they are working very hard to get the younger girls out.
Sam PTC in taxi PTC: Calcutta might look pretty scruffy at the beginning but it is at the centre of India’s economic boom with an enormous amount of information technology and other industries growing up out of this mess. And that is fuelling a consumer boom in all kinds of things.
10:09:06 COMM: Among the products widely sold on the streets of Calcutta’s red light district are children.We had to film secretly because Durba, the union which controls the streets didn’t like our camera. According to them there aren’t any under age prostitutes. Yet near here, Pratima had been raped – and some of the girls the madams were watching over appeared to be in their early teens.
Sam What’s your name? – Bulta What’s your name? – TundaHow old are you?
Madame 19
Sam 19? – How old are you?
Madame 24
Sam 24! Right, right! – and the moon is made of cheese
Sam in vision If somebody came here and they said we can take you away from here and give you an education. What would you say?
Girls shaking head
Sam in vision Are you afraid of getting any diseases?
Sam She can’t answer? Why not? If she is 24 years old that means she is old enough to have sex with anybody she wants. She is old enough to vote. How come she is not old enough to talk?
10:10:35 COMM: I was hussled off the streets by the madams.
Translator They are getting very, very angry.
Sam to camera We are being escorted back to their office.
10:10:48 COMM: We were reminded that trouble makers got acid in their faces.
10:10:50 GV Durba office, gold fish + Stop trafficking poster COMM: The sex-workers union insists that all prostitutes are over 18, they don’t face violence, and they are not exploited.
10:10:53 DIFIT photo, Belinda Gates dancing COMM: Durba is lobbying for the legalisation of prostitution. It’s won the financial backing from the British government and Melinda Gates. But it would have been very little use to a trafficked girl like Pratima.
Sam question Sam Sync: I have just come from Siliguri and up around there, where I have met a number of girls who have been trafficked. And a number of girls who have escaped from being trafficked and some families of girls who have disappeared into the sex trade. And that is not voluntary. That is slavery and therefore anybody who has sex with them is committing rape. And some of these girls are under 18. So not only is it slavery and rape but it’s rape of a minor.
DURBA Union spokesman COMM: Bachchu Dutta is Durba’s boss, and the son of a sex worker.
Sam summary PTC: Bajaju says that his organisation is opposed to any kind of child labour, whether it’s in the construction industry or sex work. And that is why his organisation is getting together and has a series of self-regulatory bodies that keep the young people and the unwilling workers, sex workers out of the trade.He says since 98 there aren’t any underage girls working on the street.
Sam question But - I have just taken a walk on the street here and I met about 4 girls at least who were definitely not over 18 and they weren’t allowed to speak for themselves.
10:12:30 DURBA Union spokesman COMM: He stuck to the party line. Any under age girls will not be allowed to work, they’ll be rescued. And there aren’t any under age prostitutes in Calcutta. Never mind the evidence of my own eyes. The UN says that 30,000 women and girls are forced into slavery through Calcutta every year.I wonder whose interests the Sex Worker’s Union represent. Enslaved prostitutes or the industry that enslaves them?
10:13:03 Sam looking and pointing at India map PTC The scale of this problem is phenomenal. Pratima’s journey into and out of prostitution started here in Siliguri.That’s where she was captured. She was then taken to Calcutta where she was raped and prostituted and put on a train and sold into Sheila’s brothel in Bombay.
10:16:09 GV Bombay trafficMusic COMM: So I flew to the subcontinent’s commercial capital. “Sheila’s” did seem an improbable name for an Indian brothel.
10:13:42 GV guard at Rescue Foundation COMM: but I’d been given the address of someone who could help.
Sam PTC beside RF sign PTC: The Rescue Foundation is one of the few organisations I’ve come across that actually rescues women and trafficked children from the brothels and I am going trying to find out if they know about this women or this place called Sheila’s brothel.
GV guard opening gate
Sam questioning head of Rescue Foundation And how many girls have you rescued?
Balkrishna Over the last 7 years about 400 girls.
Sam 400 just in Bombay
Balkrishna No, no, not just Bombay. Bombay, New Bombay…
Sam question I interviewed a girl called Pratima who was rescued. But she said that she was held in a brothel run by – she said it was called Sheila’s.
Balkrishna Sheila, yah, yah, yah
Sam You know it?
Balkrishna I know Sheila. Sheila brothel I have rescued I think in last 5 years more than 28 girls.
Sam 28 girls?
10:14:42 COMM: Balkrishna Acharya had a tip-off that sex slaves were still being held at Sheila’s.
Police station corridor + Police officer on phone We are going and see the local chief of police and see what he is going to do about it.
GV police officer Wahule + WA with Sam COMM: Panharinath Wahule seems unsure about the need for a raid. He believes that without prostitution there can be no civilization.
Police officer Wahule This is the need of society. This is the need of the male person. If they… this need does not fulfil I think they will commit some rapes or some molesting of the other good girls and good ladies of the society. So this is the good thing for society also. This is my opinion.
10:15:24 COMM: He did draw the line at child prostitution.
Sam question SYNC: From the Indian Police’s point of view if they are underage you go in and get them out? -
Sam PTC PTC: Well the assistant district commissioner seems to be keen to conduct this raid and is also saying that – ehm – everything got to remain an absolute secret. And we are not even going to use police from the area around the red light district because they can’t be trusted. We are going to use police that come from out of the area.
10:16:11 Music COMM: Only Balkrishna knows where Sheila’s brothel is. And he doesn’t trust the police.
Sam PTC in car PTC: We are heading into Kamatipura but the police don’t know where we are going. The actual target the brothel is kept very closely secret by the Rescue Foundation to stop any last minute leakages- through cell phones.
GV driving shots
Sam over Balkrishna Sync: We are getting very close – so that’s the second floor
Balkrishna in car That is the ground floor.
Sam Ground floor, staircase, second floor, hiding space – yeh – under the stairs. Just one?
Balkrishna Yah, just one.
GVs arrival at brothel
Sam marching into raid Ah, there are calls going out. Warning calls
GVs Balkrishna walking into brothel
Sam Is this it?
Balkrishna Please come here
Sam Aha – this is a secret place – ah there are some girls in here – what’s that other banging? Keep an eye on them Ruchira
Sam commenting on girls pulled out of hiding place There is one, two, three - have a chat with these other girls and see if they want to get out.
Balkrishna off camera There are 4 more
Claudio off camera Crazy
Sam Come on - Don’t be afraid, we are not here to hurt you. Ok.Seven, eight, they are under here. Are there any more down there?
Sam PTC in hiding place PTC: Good god! – we have just taken 10 girls, that’s 10 human beings trafficked and hidden in this space. Out of this tiny hole here, which is 4 foot by 3 foot – six girls emerged. Six! And there were four in the tiny space that I’m in right now.
Sam PTC PTC: They are all sticking to their story that they have been told to say which is that they are 25 years old which is self-evidently not the case.
10:19:03 COMM: The girls are told to wait and two police are posted on the doors while Balkrishna leads us to another part of the building.
Sam PTC PTC: Balkrishna knows that up here on the first floor there is a trap door that leads to another secret chamber. He is just arranging to get a crow bar to break this lock.
GVs Balkrishna + police searching roomsMusic COMM: These are the cells where young girls are forced to have sex with strangers just to earn their keep.
Balkrishna breaking lock
Sam walking upstairs + entering 2nd part of brothel
Sam with torch There we are. There is a trap door
Balkrishna Yah here
Sam There, that one – I get out of the way
10:20:41 Balkrishna with iron bar breaking ceiling + pulling down girls COMM: We could hear voices above us calling for help – they were short of air.
Sam helping girl She is tiny – alright – common then – alright
Sam climbing into attic shedding light on hidden girls PTC: We have come into the roof of the second brothel that we raided and we have already brought down about six girls up here. The others are now being persuaded to come out. They have been shoved into this roof
Balkrishan SYNC: Come, come, come
Sam comments Three of the girls who have come down have been suffering from a sort of suffocation. They have been very short of breath. Almost unable to walk.
Girls under roofMusic
Sam back in the street Where are the girls?
Female police Girls run away
Sam You didn’t stop them?
Female police We are two only
Sam But they are the police
Female police But there was mob
Sam But the ones next doot?
Female police They have gone also. They all escaped
Sam They all ran away
Sam PTC in front of brothel So what started off as an incredibly dramatic raid is now collapsed into farce. All of the girls were allowed to run away into the crowd.
Wahule They will get the girls
Sam I hope so because they could be in danger.
Wahule No, no, their lives, never, never. Never …
Sam We have your guarantee of that? Do we?
Wahule 100% guarantee, their lives are not in danger.
Sam Ok, good, alright
Sam to Balkrishna Now I see what you face… unbelievable!
GV Balkrishna wandering into the dark
10:23:00 COMM: A third of the girls Balkrishna has rescued over the last 15 years are HIV positive. The sex trade is booming alongside India’s economy but little is being done to curb the demand for underage girls and so more and more will be condemned to an early death.
ENDS
Subject: INDIA LAND OF MISSING CHILDREN
Date: Recorded: February 4 2005
Sound: Camera mic on track 1 + radio mic on track 2
Time Code Picture Comments
10:00:0010:00:0710:00:16 Pre-title + title COMM: Indian police raid a Bombay brothel.The madams are outragedSam Sync: “OK I’ll get out of the way”.COMM: This is the end of a month long channel four investigation. PTC: We’ve come into the roof of the brothel we’ve raided.BalKrishna Sync: Come. Come.COMM: These teenage girls are victims are one of the fastest growing industries in the world – sex traffick.
10:00:5010:01:11 COMM: India’s North East is famed for it’s tea estates and Himalayan views. It’s the ancient cross roads of trading routes between Bhutan, Nepal, India and Bangladesh.And the town of Siliguri has always been at the hub of international trade.These days that’s nothing to be proud of.
Sam PTC in car PTC: According to the UN’s latest figures, about 30,000 children are trafficked into Calcutta and a lot of them come through Siliguri
10:01:24 COMM: Some are local girls, abducted from their families. Bhoruka a self-help group is fighting to rescue children from the slave traders.
10:01:38 Sam talking to Thamali and pointing at photos Sam Sync:Thamali, what is this? A sort of rogues gallery? This is the first girl you rescued. She is still missing, she is still missing – eh – rescued, rescued, rescued.
10:01:53 Sam summary PTC: Thamali is saying that the problem of trafficking shown by this little board here in one village in Northern India that the trafficking problem is getting worse. Mainly because people don’t understand and they are naïve villagers often illiterate, hand over their girls into marriage or are taken away to work and disappear and they are simply traded in the big cities as prostitutes.
10:02:17 GV driving shots COMM: In poor families girls are often seen as a burden who’ll need a dowry when they marry. It can make sense to send them away to work. Many don’t come back.
10:02:28 Sam PTC following girl PTC: This is Rinky. She is from a family that has a missing daughter, one of about 30,000 people who are going missing in this area every year.
10:02:40 Sam talking to father Sam Sync: The reason we came is that, we heard that – ehm -
Father Narurai
10:01:48 Sam summary over pictures of Pinky photograph Sam Sync: Narurai here says that his daughter Pinky was 13 when his brother turned up at their hut with a contractor, a labour contractor, offering her work in New Delhi. 15 days went by and then they got a phone call saying that she just ran away.He doesn’t believe that they allowed her to run away. He believes that they just sold her.
10:03:0710:03:15 Poverty Pictures COMM: The poor are easy prey for the traffickers.The victims and their parents suffer an unending agony - Chermuti Burhan stopped me on the street.
10:03:27 PTC: Chirunti has just run up to me embarrassingly enough just kissed my feet. She’s begging for help because she’s lost two daughters one aged ten and one aged eleven. The eleven year old disappeared when she was sent to sell milk in the market place and two years later the same thing happened to the younger sister who was then ten years old she hasn’t heard from her daughters at all. This is really the land of missing children.
10:03:53 COMM: It’s not just local children at risk. the trade is international.Worldwide, traffickers add three million women and children to an ocean of sex slaves each year. A quarter of a million are smuggled through south Asia. SILIGURI’S border police STRUGGLE to stem the tide.
Sam at Jalpaiguri Border Checkpoint How do you tell who is a trafficked child, who is a normal child?
Police officer – yah – Specially from reliable sources. Sources who inform that they may arrive.
Sam Ah – so you get advance warnings may be from the Nepal side – or from the other side – or Bangladesh side
Police officer Especially from Bangladesh side
10:04:30 COMM: Girls are lured into slavery with promises of jobs in the big cities or simply kidnapped and lost to the families. But sometimes, a family fights back.
Sam PTC on the way to see Pratima in Siliguri PTC: I am with Probat. He is a security guard at the local stadium. Now his daughter was trafficked all the way to Bombay. He got together with the local police and actually rescued her and three other girls and another 13 who were released into the custody of the Bombay police.Your daughter is here?
Sam talking to Probat looking at trafficker photos Sam Sync: So this, this couple here are the people that trafficked your daughter to Bombay – Mumbai – Bombay.How long was your daughter Pratima, how long was she kept in Bombay?
Father Probat 9 months
Sam How old was she?
Father Probat 14 years old
Sam meeting Pratima Here she is
10:05:43 Pratima arriving COMM: Pratima was drugged with spiked mango juice, raped in Calcutta and then sold to a brothel in Bombay.
Sam Sync: Hi, my name’s Sam.
Sam question Did they beat you a lot? Were they violent with you?
Translator Almost everybody used to beat her
Sam question And did you get to keep any of the money?
Translator No
Sam question Did you ever ask for help from the customers?
Translator They used to say they will kill her if she did some thing like this
Sam If you try to escape they will kill you
WA of interview setup
Sam summary PTC: Patima had an extraordinary escape because some people tracked her down to Bombay and approached the brothel keeper and the brothel keeper let her go. And she was able to be returned here to her family.
Sam question If you met this trafficker what would you do?
Father Probat I would kill him
10:06:49 GV train Music COMM: Pratima’s father gave me some leads. I decided to see if I could follow her route and retrace the ordeal of one victim of an industry that rivals drugs and guns.
Sam PTC in train PTC: Stolen out of their fields or sold into slavery from the slums the trafficked girls from West Bengal and Bihar find their way onto these trains, these commuter trains down into Calcutta where they will begin their lives as sex slaves.
GV train arrival + taxi mess Music COMM: More than five million people struggle to get by in this swampy morass of a city.A girl smuggled into sex slavery can expect very little help here.Here the tarts have very hard hearts.
10:07:43 Sam PTC PTC: I have come to Malka’s house. As she is a madam I try to get an understanding how the sex trade really works. Why there is such a huge demand for girls – especially underage girls.
10:07:55 Sam + client COMM: I had a chat with one of the brothel regulars, closely supervised by Malka from Durba, the sex workers union.
10:08:01 Sam PTC PTC: This is sheik Mohamed Enam he is a client – and how often do you come here?
Client Three times a week
Sam Do you ever see any girls here who are under 18?
10:08:16 COMM: Woops – wrong question.
10:14:58 Sam summary Malka interrupted and said since DURBA her organisation is working here there are no underage girls. But she does point out that women as young as 12 get married in India. Also the official legal limit is 18. And in a society like that it’s inevitable that underage girls can end up in prostitution. Although they are working very hard to get the younger girls out.
Sam PTC in taxi PTC: Calcutta might look pretty scruffy at the beginning but it is at the centre of India’s economic boom with an enormous amount of information technology and other industries growing up out of this mess. And that is fuelling a consumer boom in all kinds of things.
10:09:06 COMM: Among the products widely sold on the streets of Calcutta’s red light district are children.We had to film secretly because Durba, the union which controls the streets didn’t like our camera. According to them there aren’t any under age prostitutes. Yet near here, Pratima had been raped – and some of the girls the madams were watching over appeared to be in their early teens.
Sam What’s your name? – Bulta What’s your name? – TundaHow old are you?
Madame 19
Sam 19? – How old are you?
Madame 24
Sam 24! Right, right! – and the moon is made of cheese
Sam in vision If somebody came here and they said we can take you away from here and give you an education. What would you say?
Girls shaking head
Sam in vision Are you afraid of getting any diseases?
Sam She can’t answer? Why not? If she is 24 years old that means she is old enough to have sex with anybody she wants. She is old enough to vote. How come she is not old enough to talk?
10:10:35 COMM: I was hussled off the streets by the madams.
Translator They are getting very, very angry.
Sam to camera We are being escorted back to their office.
10:10:48 COMM: We were reminded that trouble makers got acid in their faces.
10:10:50 GV Durba office, gold fish + Stop trafficking poster COMM: The sex-workers union insists that all prostitutes are over 18, they don’t face violence, and they are not exploited.
10:10:53 DIFIT photo, Belinda Gates dancing COMM: Durba is lobbying for the legalisation of prostitution. It’s won the financial backing from the British government and Melinda Gates. But it would have been very little use to a trafficked girl like Pratima.
Sam question Sam Sync: I have just come from Siliguri and up around there, where I have met a number of girls who have been trafficked. And a number of girls who have escaped from being trafficked and some families of girls who have disappeared into the sex trade. And that is not voluntary. That is slavery and therefore anybody who has sex with them is committing rape. And some of these girls are under 18. So not only is it slavery and rape but it’s rape of a minor.
DURBA Union spokesman COMM: Bachchu Dutta is Durba’s boss, and the son of a sex worker.
Sam summary PTC: Bajaju says that his organisation is opposed to any kind of child labour, whether it’s in the construction industry or sex work. And that is why his organisation is getting together and has a series of self-regulatory bodies that keep the young people and the unwilling workers, sex workers out of the trade.He says since 98 there aren’t any underage girls working on the street.
Sam question But - I have just taken a walk on the street here and I met about 4 girls at least who were definitely not over 18 and they weren’t allowed to speak for themselves.
10:12:30 DURBA Union spokesman COMM: He stuck to the party line. Any under age girls will not be allowed to work, they’ll be rescued. And there aren’t any under age prostitutes in Calcutta. Never mind the evidence of my own eyes. The UN says that 30,000 women and girls are forced into slavery through Calcutta every year.I wonder whose interests the Sex Worker’s Union represent. Enslaved prostitutes or the industry that enslaves them?
10:13:03 Sam looking and pointing at India map PTC The scale of this problem is phenomenal. Pratima’s journey into and out of prostitution started here in Siliguri.That’s where she was captured. She was then taken to Calcutta where she was raped and prostituted and put on a train and sold into Sheila’s brothel in Bombay.
10:16:09 GV Bombay trafficMusic COMM: So I flew to the subcontinent’s commercial capital. “Sheila’s” did seem an improbable name for an Indian brothel.
10:13:42 GV guard at Rescue Foundation COMM: but I’d been given the address of someone who could help.
Sam PTC beside RF sign PTC: The Rescue Foundation is one of the few organisations I’ve come across that actually rescues women and trafficked children from the brothels and I am going trying to find out if they know about this women or this place called Sheila’s brothel.
GV guard opening gate
Sam questioning head of Rescue Foundation And how many girls have you rescued?
Balkrishna Over the last 7 years about 400 girls.
Sam 400 just in Bombay
Balkrishna No, no, not just Bombay. Bombay, New Bombay…
Sam question I interviewed a girl called Pratima who was rescued. But she said that she was held in a brothel run by – she said it was called Sheila’s.
Balkrishna Sheila, yah, yah, yah
Sam You know it?
Balkrishna I know Sheila. Sheila brothel I have rescued I think in last 5 years more than 28 girls.
Sam 28 girls?
10:14:42 COMM: Balkrishna Acharya had a tip-off that sex slaves were still being held at Sheila’s.
Police station corridor + Police officer on phone We are going and see the local chief of police and see what he is going to do about it.
GV police officer Wahule + WA with Sam COMM: Panharinath Wahule seems unsure about the need for a raid. He believes that without prostitution there can be no civilization.
Police officer Wahule This is the need of society. This is the need of the male person. If they… this need does not fulfil I think they will commit some rapes or some molesting of the other good girls and good ladies of the society. So this is the good thing for society also. This is my opinion.
10:15:24 COMM: He did draw the line at child prostitution.
Sam question SYNC: From the Indian Police’s point of view if they are underage you go in and get them out? -
Sam PTC PTC: Well the assistant district commissioner seems to be keen to conduct this raid and is also saying that – ehm – everything got to remain an absolute secret. And we are not even going to use police from the area around the red light district because they can’t be trusted. We are going to use police that come from out of the area.
10:16:11 Music COMM: Only Balkrishna knows where Sheila’s brothel is. And he doesn’t trust the police.
Sam PTC in car PTC: We are heading into Kamatipura but the police don’t know where we are going. The actual target the brothel is kept very closely secret by the Rescue Foundation to stop any last minute leakages- through cell phones.
GV driving shots
Sam over Balkrishna Sync: We are getting very close – so that’s the second floor
Balkrishna in car That is the ground floor.
Sam Ground floor, staircase, second floor, hiding space – yeh – under the stairs. Just one?
Balkrishna Yah, just one.
GVs arrival at brothel
Sam marching into raid Ah, there are calls going out. Warning calls
GVs Balkrishna walking into brothel
Sam Is this it?
Balkrishna Please come here
Sam Aha – this is a secret place – ah there are some girls in here – what’s that other banging? Keep an eye on them Ruchira
Sam commenting on girls pulled out of hiding place There is one, two, three - have a chat with these other girls and see if they want to get out.
Balkrishna off camera There are 4 more
Claudio off camera Crazy
Sam Come on - Don’t be afraid, we are not here to hurt you. Ok.Seven, eight, they are under here. Are there any more down there?
Sam PTC in hiding place PTC: Good god! – we have just taken 10 girls, that’s 10 human beings trafficked and hidden in this space. Out of this tiny hole here, which is 4 foot by 3 foot – six girls emerged. Six! And there were four in the tiny space that I’m in right now.
Sam PTC PTC: They are all sticking to their story that they have been told to say which is that they are 25 years old which is self-evidently not the case.
10:19:03 COMM: The girls are told to wait and two police are posted on the doors while Balkrishna leads us to another part of the building.
Sam PTC PTC: Balkrishna knows that up here on the first floor there is a trap door that leads to another secret chamber. He is just arranging to get a crow bar to break this lock.
GVs Balkrishna + police searching roomsMusic COMM: These are the cells where young girls are forced to have sex with strangers just to earn their keep.
Balkrishna breaking lock
Sam walking upstairs + entering 2nd part of brothel
Sam with torch There we are. There is a trap door
Balkrishna Yah here
Sam There, that one – I get out of the way
10:20:41 Balkrishna with iron bar breaking ceiling + pulling down girls COMM: We could hear voices above us calling for help – they were short of air.
Sam helping girl She is tiny – alright – common then – alright
Sam climbing into attic shedding light on hidden girls PTC: We have come into the roof of the second brothel that we raided and we have already brought down about six girls up here. The others are now being persuaded to come out. They have been shoved into this roof
Balkrishan SYNC: Come, come, come
Sam comments Three of the girls who have come down have been suffering from a sort of suffocation. They have been very short of breath. Almost unable to walk.
Girls under roofMusic
Sam back in the street Where are the girls?
Female police Girls run away
Sam You didn’t stop them?
Female police We are two only
Sam But they are the police
Female police But there was mob
Sam But the ones next doot?
Female police They have gone also. They all escaped
Sam They all ran away
Sam PTC in front of brothel So what started off as an incredibly dramatic raid is now collapsed into farce. All of the girls were allowed to run away into the crowd.
Wahule They will get the girls
Sam I hope so because they could be in danger.
Wahule No, no, their lives, never, never. Never …
Sam We have your guarantee of that? Do we?
Wahule 100% guarantee, their lives are not in danger.
Sam Ok, good, alright
Sam to Balkrishna Now I see what you face… unbelievable!
GV Balkrishna wandering into the dark
10:23:00 COMM: A third of the girls Balkrishna has rescued over the last 15 years are HIV positive. The sex trade is booming alongside India’s economy but little is being done to curb the demand for underage girls and so more and more will be condemned to an early death.
ENDS