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Mumbai India : Minors in Sex Trade

There are approximately 10 million prostitutes in India. (Human Rights Watch, Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

There are more than 100,000 women in prostitution in Bombay, Asia’s largest sex industry center. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

At least 2,000 women are in prostitution along the Baina beachfront in Goa. (Frederick Moronha, India Abroad News Service, 9 August 1997)

There are 300,000-500,000 children in prostitution in India. (Rahul Bedi, "Bid To Protect Children As Sex Tourism Spreads,"London’s Daily Telegraph, 23 August, 1997)

Men who believe that AIDS and other STDs can be cured by having sex with a virgin, are forcing young girls into the sex industry; seven year old girls are neither uncommon nor the youngest. (Tim McGirk "Nepal's Lost Daughters, 'India's soiled goods,"Nepal/India News, 27 January 1997)

Approximately 20,000 or 20% of women in prostitution in Bombay are under 18. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

Every day, about 200 girls and women in India enter prostitution, 80% of them against their will. (Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) and Planning Rural-Uraban Intergrated Development through Education (PRIDE), "Devadasi System Continues to Legitimise Prostitution: The Devadasi Tradition and Prostitution," TOI, 4 December 1997)

Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Tamil, Nadu and Uttar Pradesh are the high-supply zones for women in prostitution. Belgaum, Bijapur, and Kolhapur are some common districts from which women migrate to cities either through an organized trafficking network, or due to socioeconomic forces (Central Social Welfare Board, Meena Menon, "Women in India’s Trafficking Belt", 30 March 1998)

Bangalore is one of the five major cities in India which together account for 80 percent of child prostitutes in the country. (Seethalakshmi S., "Karnataka girls being sold to Goa breothels," Time Of India, 28 May 1998)

90% of the 100,000 women in prostitution in Bombay are indentured slaves. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

Prostitution is increasing in India where there have been fears over the spread of AIDS and reports of young girls being abducted and forced into prostitution. ("Asian prostitutes meet to demand legal status," Reuters, 29 July 1998)

It takes up to fifteen years for girls held in prostitution via debt-bondage to purchase their freedom. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

Children of prostituted women are victims of sexual abuse as well. Children are forced to perform dances and songs for male buyers, and some are forced to sexually service the males. (Activists, Meena Menon, "Tourism and Prostitution," 1997)

Of 1,000 red light districts all over India, cage prostitutes are mostly minors, often from Nepal and Bangladesh. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)

In Bombay, 95% of the children of prostituted women become prostitutes. One child, who had repeatedly been sodomized by the men who bought his mother, decided to become a eunuch. He was ritually castrated. (Sheela Remedios program director of Project Child, Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

There are three routes into prostitution for most women in India. 1) Deception; 2) Devadasi dedication and 3) Bad marriages or families. For some women their marriages were so violent they preferred prostitution. Husbands or families introduced some women to prostitution. Many families knew what the women had to do, but ignored it as long as they got the benefits from it. (Malini Karkal "Down Memory Lane," (interview, The Maharashtra Times, 19 November 1997)

The red light district in Bombay generates at least $400 million a year in revenue, with 100,000 prostitutes servicing men 365 days a year, averaging 6 customers a day, at $2 each. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

The largest red light district in India, perhaps in the world, is the Falkland Road Kamatipura area of Bombay. (film,"The Selling of Innocents" 1997)

In Kamathipura brothel district in Bombay more than 70,000 prostituted women and girls are bought by three men a day. Condoms are seldom used. Escape is rare. (Tim McGirk "Nepal's Lost Daughters, 'India's soiled goods,'" 27 January 1997)

There are many dhabhas, or small-scale brothels, along the Solapur-Hyderabad highway, which provide women as an "additional service" to truck drivers and motorists. One woman who runs a dhabha had previously been in prostitution. Now, with a shed, two cots and a few girls from nearby villages, she owns the brothel. "I rented this place for Rs 1000 a month and take Rs 20 per man from the girls. (Meena Menon "The Twilight Zone," The Hindu, 27 July 1997)

A brothel owner along the Solapur-Hyderabad highway reported that he has two women. He takes a Rs 15 commission for each man. Since this is illegal, he pays the nearest police station Rs 1,000 a month as hafta, or bribe. If a girl is beautiful, she will be bought by five to ten men a day. The owner’s monthly earnings can reach Rs 4,000 to 5,000 a month. (Meena Menon "The Twilight Zone," The Hindu, 27 July 1997)

A brothel owner along the Solapur-Hyderabad highway reported that prostituting women is good a business. He had ten to 12 girls. He paid the police Rs 6,000 as a monthly bribe. He goes to Bombay to bring women and girls, implying he was part of a bigger network. (Meena Menon, "The Twilight Zone," The Hindu, 27 July 1997)

The women and girls in the dhabhas, or brothels, along the Solapur-Hyderabad highway, are threatened, harassed, forced to service men, or goondas, freely and beaten by men and police. Local farmers abuse them also. Police do not register any complaints of assault. In one cases, a woman who was running over unfamiliar fields to escape the police in pitch darkness; she stumbled into a well and was killed. Sometimes, bodies of women are found on the fields, half eaten by animals. Another woman had her ears cut off, was robbed and left unconscious on the road. (Meena Menon, "The Twilight Zone," The Hindu, 27 July 1997)

Eunuch Lane in Bombay has more than 2,000 eunuchs in prostitution. The eunuchs, or hijras, have deep religious roots in Hinduism. As young boys they are abandoned or sold by their families to a sex ring and taken into the jungle, where a priest cuts off their genitals in a ceremony called nirvana. The priest then folds back a strip of flesh to create an artificial vagina. Eunuchs are generally more available to perform high-risk sex than female prostitutes, and some Indian men believe they can’t contact HIV from them. (Robert I. Freidman, "India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption Are Leading to An AIDS Catastrophe," The Nation, 8 April 1996)

A survey of prostituted women in India reveals their reasoning for staying in prostitution (in descending order of significance): poverty/ unemployment; lack of proper reintegration services, lack of options; stigma and adverse social attitudes; family expectations and pressure; resignation and acclimation to the lifestyle. (CATW - Asia Pacific, Trafficking in Women and Prostitution in the Asia Pacific)