According to a report by Human Rights Watch Asia in June 1995 probably more than a million women and children are employed in Indian brothels. Many are victims of trafficking through international borders, mostly Nepal and Bangladesh. Bombay has an estimated 100,000 brothel workers. Twenty percent of Bombay’s brothel population is thought to be girls under the age of eighteen.
Trafficking victims in India are subjected to conditions tantamount to slavery and to serious physical abuse. Held in debt bondage for years at a time, they are raped and subjected to other forms of torture, to severe beatings, exposure to AIDS, and arbitrary imprisonment. Many are young women from remote hill villages and poor border communities who are lured from their villages by local recruiters, relatives or neighbours promising jobs or marriage, and sold for very small amounts to brokers who deliver them to brothel owners in India for anywhere from Rs.15,000 to Rs.40,000 [$500-$1,333]. This purchase price (Human Rights Watch Asia report, 1995) becomes the “debt” that the women must work to pay off — a process that can stretch on indefinitely.
According to an AFP report at least 20,000 Bangladeshi women and children are trafficked to India and Pakistan and to Middle Eastern countries every year. According to a Times of India report an estimated 50,000 Bangladeshi girls are trafficked to or through India every year. The girls end up in brothels in India or Pakistan or in Middle Eastern or South Asian countries.
India shares a 4,222-kilometers border with 28 Bangladeshi districts. Bangladeshi traffickers have built up bases in the border districts of India. According to an Independent Bangladesh report an estimated 90 percent of trafficked women were forced to engage in prostitution. Reportedly, 400,000 Bangladeshi women are engaged in forced prostitution in India, and 300,000 Bangladeshi boys have been trafficked to India. According to one report, every day 50 Bangladeshi girls are lured across the Indian border and sold. Bangladeshi girls who are trafficked to India by organised networks usually end up in brothels in Kolkata or Mumbai.
