In The Name of Rescue: Of Minor Girls from Sex Work

[Guest guest]

Dear FORUM,

" We find audacious ways to restore justice to children and the poorest of the

poor, " declares the website of Restore International, a Christian evangelical

organisation. The recent episode of trying to rescue a 13-year-old girl in

Miraj, twin city to Sangli, who was at 'high risk' of being initiated into

prostitution is perhaps a sinister example of such audaciousness gone awry.

IN THE NAME OF RESCUE

A REPORT of The Fact-Finding Committee Investigation into the Alleged

Molestation/Rape of a Minor Girl by a Decoy Customer in Uttam Nagar, Miraj,

Sangli District, Maharashtra 12 May 2007

Fact Finding Committee

Manisha Gupte Women's rights activist, Pune

Vidya Kulkarni Senior journalist, Pune

Asim Sarode Human rights lawyer, Pune

Vijaya Kadam Child rights activist, Pune

Acknowledgment: We wish to thank Bishakha Datta, Point of View, Mumbai for her

invaluable inputs.

THE 'RESCUERS'

" We find audacious ways to restore justice to children and the poorest of the

poor, " declares the website of Restore International, a Christian evangelical

organisation. The recent episode of trying to rescue a 13-year-old girl in

Miraj, twin city to Sangli, who was at 'high risk' of being initiated into

prostitution is perhaps a sinister example of such audaciousness gone awry.

On May 11, 2007 at around noon , the Miraj City Police raided a room in Uttam

Nagar (aka Prem Nagar) in Miraj on the information that a girl of minor age was

being trafficked into prostitution. Shyam Kamble, a member of the Ooty-based

Freedom Firm, who also represents Restore International as per information from

the Miraj police, provided the information to them.

Both Freedom Firm and Restore International are Christian evangelist groups

working at the national and international level. On one website, Freedom Firm,

which is a project of the Valley of Praise Charitable Society is described as an

organisation that rescues underage Indian girls from prostitution, restores them

in Christ and prosecutes the perpetrators. Its founder Greg Malstead, was

previously the Mumbai director of the International Justice Mission, which also

works closely with Restore International as per the information provided by the

Miraj police station.

In 2005, the International Justice Mission (IJM) had conducted a similar raid in

Sangli, in the area where VAMP, the reputed collective of women in prostitution

is located. On that occasion, Greg Malstead, then of IJM had also used the name

of Restore International, which was then, allegedly an unregistered body.

The accusations and counter-accusations during this episode have been documented

in press reports and are available on the Internet. These Christian evangelists

position VAMP as a collective of brothel owners who are themselves involved in

trafficking – even though the police themselves admit that women from the VAMP

collective inform them when young girls are trafficked into the area. VAMP is

not against adult women entering the trade by their own volition. They believe

that all prostitution is not through trafficking and conversely, all trafficking

is not for prostitution. They have always opposed child prostitution and child

sexual abuse in any form.

11 MAY 2007

THE INCIDENT

On May 11, 2007 at 10 am a decoy customer from Freedom Firm by the name of Raju

met Surekha (alias Renuka) Kamble, a sex worker from Uttam Nagar,

Miraj. Raju was a client she had serviced a few days ago for Rs. 50. According

to Surekha's statement to the police on Saturday12th May 2007, Raju said he

would be back with another friend at 12 noon . What follows is based on

interviews with various people - the adolescent being 'rescued'; community

members, VAMP community-level workers and the police.

At 12 noon , Raju (who had visited Surekha earlier) and Verghese

came into the sex workers' community with two marked notes of Rs. 500. They gave

the money to Surekha, asked her for sex and also asked her to get a girl for the

other man. Surekha went to find a girl [4] and after 10 minutes of futile

searching, returned to find her room was locked. She waited in her mother's room

in the opposite row.

The police arrived after a while and started banging on the door of the locked

room. Raju opened the door and came out. He was followed by a

13-year-old girl who was sobbing. The community had gathered by then and a

ruckus followed. A VAMP staff member reported that ASI Sadashiv Vaidya pulled

the 13-year-old towards the police van by her hair.

In another version, Surekha said that when she returned, the police were already

outside the door of her own rented room. The police maintain that Surekha did

not go anywhere at all, but just waited in her mother's room while Raju was in

the room with the 13-year- old.

There is a possibility that Surekha was part of the decoy action or was trying

to set up the girl. As long as the police 'need' her statement for the

anti-trafficking angle, it will be difficult to prove her innocence or guilt.

There is also a possibility of Surekha being made a scapegoat in this process,

especially if the official decoys have to be protected and the embarrassment to

the police avoided.

How did the 13-year-old girl get in the room with ? Since she did chores

for the community, apparently she went into Surekha's room with water she had

filled from the basti (community) tap. As soon as she entered, Raju locked the

door, started molesting her and gagged her with his hand. He flung her on the

bed and tried to undress her.

Hereafter, there are numerous speculations as to what may have happened.

· The young girl consistently maintains that Raju raped her (she gave a

graphic description of penetration).

· The police maintain that it was impossible to rape her in the 3-4 minute time

slot between the closing of the door and the police banging on it.

· The report of physical examination in the Miraj civil hospital states that no

recent penetration had occurred and that even matting of the pubic hair was

absent.

Vaginal swabs from the 13-year-old girl have gone for examination as also the

bed sheet and undergarment of the young girl. The police have promised to send

these clothes, along with Raju ' semen sample for DNA testing. These

garments were retrieved by the community and not by the police, as the latter

say they were not aware of the 'rape angle' until the girl spoke to the

community, later on the afternoon of 11 May.

The police's omissions

The police did not ask the obvious questions related to sexual assault when a

minor girl is closeted in a room with a man and when she comes out looking upset

- this is a grave act of omission on their part.

Whether or not it is a rescue operation, the police cannot be blind to sexual

molestation, assault or rape. Since the decoy was operating with police support,

the molestation/rape of the girl amounts to custodial assault and the police are

unquestionably answerable for the behavior of the decoy.

The media's role

Newspapers published details of the raid. Daily Lokmat [ a Marathi daily] even

had photographs of the operation, indicating that the press was also present

during the raid. The girl was declared to be a prostitute and her photograph was

part of the newspaper report.

We find this gender insensitive and sensational way of reporting to be damaging

to the girl. Besides, if the girl has actually been raped, then the press has

violated ethics and law by disclosing her name and showing her face to thousands

of readers.

The aftermath

In the meanwhile, hundreds of angry sex workers from Miraj and Sangli gathered

in the Miraj police station and had a sit out there until late night. When the

police prevailed upon them to go back, they did, but returned in even larger

numbers the next day. That is the scene the fact-finding team saw when we

reached the police station on 12 May at 10:30am .

12 MAY 2007

THE FACT-FINDING

The fact-finding team was constituted on the late evening of 11 May as soon as

we heard about the happenings in Miraj. Though all of us are aware of VAMP's

work, and the work of SANGRAM, which seeded VAMP, the team was formed by Manisha

Gupte, a Pune-based women's rights activist and not by any of the two mentioned

organisations.

We reached Sangli in the early hours of 12 May. We first went to Miraj civil

hospital, where we met Dr. Hulbansar as well as the young girl and her mother.

The girl narrated her story to us through an interpreter (she speaks only

Kannada - she can understand a small bit of Hindi and Marathi). The doctors on

duty could not tell us much as they hadn't been on duty when the girl had been

admitted.

After that, we visited the sex workers' lane in Uttam/Prem Nagar. This area is

vastly different from brothels one sees in Mumbai or in Pune. The homes are

single storied (mostly single rooms), there are no cages and one can see older

as well as younger women standing or walking about on the street, doing their

daily chores (it was probably too early for sex work).

The community showed us the room in which the girl had been locked up. It is a

nondescript room, with a large single bed, a few vessels, some colourful clothes

on a line and a photo of , Surekha's father who passed away in

2004. Hardly anything else meets the eye in the room. We saw that the mud wall

outside had been damaged, perhaps due to the altercation that had taken place

during the raid. The girl's mother's room was almost opposite this room.

Though the rooms have weak ceilings, no one heard the girl's screams in

Surekha's room, because the two rooms close to this one were empty at the time

of the molestation.

The police version

Most of our day was spent at Miraj police station with Dy. SP. Dr. Digambar

Pradhan and PSI Bajirao Patil. The police version of the episode is as follows:

Shyam Kamble of Freedom Firm had contacted the police with news of a young girl

being trafficked into the local brothel. The police kept mentioning him as being

from Restore International (RI), perhaps because that was the name of the group

when Greg Malstead and his team had raided the brothels in Sangli in 2005. They

also knew Mr. Malstead; in fact, PSI Patil spoke of the decoys as 'our punters'.

On Kamble's tip-off, the police set out with the decoys from RI/FF into the

community on 11 May around noon . The decoys ( and Verghese) went to

give the marked money to Surekha, while the plainclothes police waited around.

Surekha took the money and went to her mother's room, which is opposite where

the young girl was held by the decoy.

As soon as went into the room with the girl and closed the door, the

police banged on it and got the two people outside.

According to them, the time lapse was barely 3-4 minutes, during which some "

zhapta-zhapti " (molestation) at the most could have taken place, but rape wasn't

possible. However when we spoke to the sex workers, they said that sexual

contact is easily possible in 3-5 minutes.

The moot question - time

The moot question in the evidence (if ever the case goes to court), is to

establish whether the time lapse was barely 3-4 minutes (as the police say), or

whether it was more than that.

What we constructed from various conversations was that the time period was

between 7-10 minutes. It would also be important to prove whether the police

were right outside the room or whether they were at some distance. Since most

policemen (even in plain clothes) are known to the sex workers' community, it

may be more likely that that they were not waiting exactly outside Surekha's

room. Perhaps they were outside the community and came in after being informed

that money had exchanged hands.

Men, being clients of the sex workers, are of professional interest to the

community and therefore the presence of men hanging around the room could not

have gone unnoticed here. If the police were away, then their theory (of rape

being impossible, since there were only a couple of minutes available then),

doesn't hold any more.

Meenakshi, a SANGRAM volunteer reported that she had gone to attend a meeting of

the organisation in Sangli. Then she went to a wedding in Miraj. She came to

know about the raid while at the wedding and immediately went to Uttam Nagar.

She was present when the police dragged Rekha by her hair. It would have taken

at least 15-20 minutes for her to reach Uttam Nagar.

These various constructs cast doubt on the police's assertion that the whole

episode took just a few minutes.

Other issues

a)Taking the community into confidence

The police say that they have numerous informers within the community and even

accept that the sex workers from VAMP themselves bring trafficked women and

children to the police station It is therefore surprising that the police did

not take VAMP or SANGRAM into confidence when Freedom Firm contacted them about

a minor girl being in the sex trade in Uttam Nagar. This lapse is even more

serious since the police are aware of the well-known old antagonism that Restore

International and their extended parivar have towards this prostitutes'

collective.

b)The girl's presence in the community

The reasons for the young girl living in this community are complex. First, her

mother, Shivbai, has been living there for the past 8-10 years. The mother was

at one time in the trade. She gave it up many years ago, when she found a '

malak' (regular lover), who works in Kolhapur as a mason and has been sending

money (Rs 5000-15000) at regular intervals.

Shivbai has three daughters and a young son. The girl in questions refers to her

mother's malak as her father – perhaps he is her biological parent as well. As

the young girl started growing up, the mother started sending her to their

village in Karnataka, partially in order to stay away from the sex workers'

community and partially to keep an eye on the village home and bring the

fortnightly ration from there.

Shivbai's younger sister who also lives in Uttam Nagar has never been in the

trade herself, but she keeps two rooms and her two adult daughters are sex

workers. Shivbai and the young girl make their living by doing chores for the

community and get paid on a daily basis. The narrations regarding the malak were

contradictory – Shivbai said he died a few months ago, but the young girl said

that he was in Kolhapur .

It is possible that Shivbai may have plans of putting her own daughter in the

trade – some VAMP members said that they had warned Shivbai about this and had

explicitly advised her not to initiate her daughter so soon. Thus, one may ask

the obvious question: Was the girl at potential risk of being initiated into

prostitution? Yes, she was. But was she at immediate risk? No, not as long as

she lived in Uttam Nagar where VAMP has a strong presence.

Ironically, the police tried to rescue someone who wasn't even in the trade from

a place where the local surveillance of VAMP was keeping the girl safe from

being sold or initiated into prostitution as a minor. Once more, the mix up

between being anti-trafficking (which is an illegal and unethical act that also

violates human rights of people) and being anti-prostitution (which is a

moralistic position) has created the present mess. Prostitution is not illegal

in India , but soliciting and living off a prostitute's earnings is.

In this episode, we need to find out how much of the raid by Freedom Firm was

due to a clearly anti-trafficking position and how much was due to their mission

of 'redeeming' prostitutes. We would therefore ask whether they also rescue

people who are trafficked into child labour, as domestic labour or for other

'non-sexual' labour. Such activities are not evident from their website or from

information available about them.

c)Issues that the 13-year-old girl faces after the raid

VAMP members realized that the young girl who has now been accused of being a

minor in prostitution and is also repeatedly claiming that she has been sexually

violated is at a very real risk from men who have read about her in the papers.

Thus they took a decision to talk to the mother of the child and the girl

herself to look for an acceptable solution for this messy problem.

The meeting with the mother resulted in the girl being taken to the police

station by the mother and VAMP members on 15 May 2007 . She was taken there with

another young girl, barely 13, who was brought to the Miraj community on 14 t

May 2007, by a man who asked to be given a room for the purpose of having sex

with her. VAMP members collected other community members and threatened the man

who subsequently ran away.

This minor was also taken to the police station but the police could not provide

a female constable as protection. So the police themselves sent her back to the

community deciding that VAMP was the safest place for her till she could be

committed to the remand home!

Both these girls were then taken to the government facility for young girls and

committed there with the help of the police. This ironic end to the fact-finding

reveals the love-hate relation that the police have with the prostitutes'

collective.

An Interview

As part of the fact-finding, we interviewed Meena Seshu, general secretary,

SANGRAM on SANGRAM and VAMP's position on young girls in the sex trade and on

raids.

Q: What do you feel about the raids?

MS: We are opposed to raids as a method to stop young girls from entering the

trade. Prostitution is a system that exists in a society fraught with

inequalities. Gender inequalities, economic inequalities, caste, class and race

contribute to a social fabric that is abusive of women's rights and the rights

of the girl child, and to a culture that does not value the girl child.

The girl child is thus sacrificed at the altar of male-dominated patriarchal

systems that believes they exist to be moulded to accept sexuality within and

outside marriage that is actually detrimental to their health. Abject poverty,

drought, famine, and economic inequalities complete the picture. These

structural issues need to be kept in mind while we search for a solution that is

best for the `child in need of care and protection'.

Q: How can young girls be protected then?

MS: What is the best solution for a 'girl child in need of care and protection'?

A simplistic solution - such as raid and rescue- only offers patchwork relief,

and takes away the rights of the girl child by inflicting untold violence on her

in the process.

The 'raid, rescue and rehabilitation' model blames the community, pushing it to

a corner of no return. Such strategies that have violated the rights of the

women in prostitution have not yielded good results for generations.

We need solutions that are long term and those that can be implemented

effectively. We need strategies that will strengthen women to resist being

pushed into those corners and build the will to reject the unacceptable and

illegal violation and sexual abuse of the girl child.

Q: What kinds of strategies do you mean?

MS: The collectivisation of women in prostitution, which is a rights-based

approach, is one such strategy. It creates a space for women in prostitution to

collectively look for solutions to their problems. It helps them to access

information and education about rights and to take informed decisions.

VAMP has made the women realise that collective strength can be used against

goondas and other anti-social elements who were exploiting them. Lately, the

VAMP mohalla committee has also tackled brothel owners who are abusive and who

extort money from the girls. This has been a slow process and has taken a long

time to implement.

This collective works on the understanding that the way to stop young

girls/minors from entering prostitution is to strengthen and educate women in

prostitution to stop child sexual abuse. The strategy therefore is to build

collectives that will teach them dignity and strengthen them to stop the menace

of child trafficking and child sexual abuse. Communities need to be taken into

confidence to ensure that minors do not replace the ones rescued by the police.

We need to help collectives appoint mohalla committees to watch over such women

who break the law and pressurise them to remain within the law and to work with

the police to keep anti-social elements outside the communities. The most

important intervention is to teach women their rights and help them fight for

the same.

CONCLUSION

Reaching a consensus on facts

Various versions of people's stories (except the 13-year-old girl's) changed so

much over the fact finding, that it became almost impossible to make complete

sense out of the events. What we did agree upon however is as follows:

1. Freedom Firm acted on inaccurate information and the police did not verify

the truth before they hastily jumped into the rescue operation.

2. It seems likely that PSI Bajirao Patil knew more about the lacunae in the

rescue operation and that he hadn't adequately informed his superior, Dy. SP.

Dr. Digambar Pradhan about this.

3. The police are embarrassed as their own decoy raped/molested the girl and

that the entire exercise of rescue went haywire. Perhaps they were uneasy that

the rescuers would label them as pro-sex workers; therefore they chose to ignore

the narration of the young girl and did not detain the decoy on the preliminary

charge of molestation. Now, their inaction in detaining Raju has cast

them in a suspicious light.

4. The person who had been sent as a decoy customer had been sent for a specific

purpose and with special authority. The decoy customer sent by the police was

acting under their instructions was helping the police maintain law and order.

For that purpose Raju was acting as a 'government servant'. The taking

of law and order into his own hands, misuse of law to commit an atrocity on the

minor girl are serious offences. Yet the police, which was the State agency on

whose behalf Raju was acting, have not lodged any offence against him .

5. The sex workers' community would not have taken so much umbrage unless they

were convinced that the girl was set up and that she wasn't already part of the

trade.

6. The police themselves agree that the girl wasn't in the sex trade.

7. The police did not do their homework before they carried out the rescue

operation; this lapse resulted in the human rights violations of the young girl.

8. The police colluded with Freedom Firm, in spite of the controversy

surrounding their earlier raid (carried out by the same leadership as Restore

International / International Justice Mission) and did not take the local

collective in confidence in spite of their 'excellent relationship' with the

latter.

9. Freedom Firm may have beguiled Surekha, perhaps through financial and/or

evangelist tactics. According to VAMP members, there is a strong possibility of

a lot of money having exchanged hands – Rs. 1000 would be too little to accept

if you're selling a young girl for the first time.

10. The girl could have been set up by Surekha – she may have been manipulated

into going in the latter's room while Raju was waiting there for her.

11. This episode brings to light how a poor minor girl was framed for the

purpose of enacting an adventurous rescue operation and how another sex worker

might have been used to set her up. The rescuers, who violated human rights of

the 'rescued' and basic ethical principles of being decoys, are not made

answerable to the girl, the community as well as to society. We need to look at

all the violations that happened in the name of rescue and make the violators

answerable.

12. The police agree that the girl was not in the sex trade, nor was she

'habituated' to sex. The medical report also corroborates this belief.

13. A young girl who was not in the sex trade was set up (with the purpose of

initiating her into the trade) in the very attempt of the police trying to

rescue her from the trade!

14. A 13-year-old girl went through physical and emotional trauma because

someone wanted to rescue her, even when she wasn't in the trade – but just

because she was 'high risk'.

15. The police earlier declared her a prostitute, the local newspapers splashed

this news and one paper even printed her photograph as a rescued prostitute. She

was then made to undergo a traumatic physical examination and police

investigation on the strength of which the police have now declared she was

never in the trade.

16. The doctors in the Miraj Government Hospital did not give a discharge card

and sent the minor girl to the police station on 12 May, without conducting the

prescribed sonography test on her.

17. It is unfortunate that the girl's statement about molestation/rape did not

find any veracity in the eyes of the police.

This narration has been ignored and appropriate action averted. Thus the State

has failed in the principle of due diligence of preventing and prosecuting this

act of violence.

18. Is it ethical for decoys to have sex with informants? Could the earlier

sexual encounter with Surekha have been to 'soften her up'?

19. Is it acceptable that a decoy customer closets himself with a minor girl and

attempts to molest her/actually rape her in the name of rescue?

20. Even if the police did not have actual evidence of rape, they should have

detained Raju on the girl's statement that she was raped/molested, as

per the law of the land.

21. There is an urgent need for ethical guidelines in a rescue process and

established protocols for the same. These need to be sensitive in terms of

gender, poverty, caste, age and so on. The State should give directions

regarding the appointment of decoy customers. Similarly, rules and guidelines

for the police should be made when they conduct raids, especially in the attempt

to rescue victims / survivors of atrocities.

22. What clout do the various avatars of the rescue groups based in Ooty and

Mumbai (with board members from the USA ) have in India ? Why do they have this

clout even with the police? They work in Uganda , another southern, poor country

– but what is the kind of work they do in their own countries? Do problems exist

only in developing countries?

23. The websites of some of the above, while working for " Christ's mandate " ,

also 'orientalise' India and sell products such as Nilgiri tea, amongst others.

http://www.sangram.org/currentevent.htm

Meena Seshu

e-mail: <sangram.vamp@...>