West Bengal: The epicentre of sex trafficking

In his 2014 article in The Telegraph titled ‘My five most Hellish moments’, award-winning and highly acclaimed international investigative journalist Ross Kemp wrote how West Bengal is one of the five most hellish places in the world because it is a place where sex traffickers operate with immunity using help from certain members of the authorities. Ross is the creator of the widely popular, hit series ‘ Extreme World’, which took him to many dark corners of the world such as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Haiti and India, particularly West Bengal. Writing in the book, A-Z of Hell, he describes the Congo conflict, which saw six million dead and 400,000 women raped every year, as a place where he met the worst criminals as part of creating his series. However, nothing left him with more disgust than when he met a young sex trafficker in West Bengal named ‘Khan’, who he believes is one of the world’s biggest mass murderers. Khan admitted on camera that he had lost count of how many girls he had killed, which he estimated to be around 400 and that he had trafficked literally thousands of girls. He told Kemp how when it looked like they were going to be caught, he was put under pressure by people in authority to kill the girls. [caption id=“attachment_13395292” align=“alignnone” width=“506”] Screen grab/ Ross Kemp’s ‘Extreme World’[/caption] Kemp estimated that about 100,000 girls go missing every year in India and it is a major multi-million-dollar inhumane industry that flourishes with the active support of the authorities. As part of this series, he went around the red light districts of India such as in Kolkata, Mumbai and with great difficulty was able to interview a trafficked girl who described her ordeal in a heart-wrenching account of how after being trapped when she was just 12 years old, with a promise of job, she was held in one room for three years with more than 15 customers per day. These girls are forced to engage in unprotected sex for years. [caption id=“attachment_13395312” align=“alignnone” width=“519”] Screen grab/ Ross Kemp’s ‘Extreme World’[/caption] He documented in his video the many parents in West Bengal who came to him begging and sobbing, requesting him to recover their daughter because of the complete indifference of the authorities to their plight. These parents come from all backgrounds and some minor girls are as young as three years old. Using a secret camera, his series also documented the young children held in the Mumbai red light district and it makes you wonder that if a foreign journalist can do it with such ease, what is stopping the authorities from investigating and stopping such activities across the brothels in the nation and get to the gangs of sex traffickers. This is nothing short of slavery and it is worse than beggars on the streets and instances of starvation. It is naked terrorism perpetrated on the most helpless, young girls from poor families. Many are as young as 10, confined in a room for years and fed with hormones so their breasts grow to make them attractive to customers. Given the humongous tragedy, Kemp questioned how India, which spends a larger percentage of GDP on arms than the United States and has multi-million-dollar space programmes, could not address this problem of such scale and brutality. [caption id=“attachment_13395322” align=“alignnone” width=“501”] Screen grab/ Ross Kemp’s ‘Extreme World’[/caption] The recent incident of a girl with her hands and legs tied, her throat slit and her face set on fire is a stark example of what happens in some districts of West Bengal, perhaps a common occurrence. But for the ground-level bodies such as Singha Bahini that posted the heart-wrenching on X (formerly Twitter), the world would not have known it. How the police handled it is another stark example of what Ross described in his findings. The police first threatened the activists not to post the video and after that, instead of apprehending the criminal gangs and their leaders who perpetrated such gruesome murder, the police found a mentally deranged person as the culprit. It is believed that the girl is from Bangladesh and as the sex trafficker who Kemp interviewed mentioned, her death was probably necessary because she caused risk to their business. Do we, as a nation, have the conscience to let these incidents go by as if they hardly matter? Which politician, judge, lawyer or bureaucrat would stand by if this happened to their own daughter or a close relative? West Bengal is not just infamous for the sex trafficking of minor girls, but also there are alleged cases of love jihad. The most recent one was that of a 15-year-old SC girl Piyali Goldar, who was gang-raped and her dead body was hung from a tree. The police allege that 17-year-old Iliyas Mondal and two other others committed the heinous crime. Will she get justice? As the tweet from Devdutta of Singha Bahini, who met the family notes, why did the police rush to get the funeral done immediately? Why did the local ruling party’s leader convince the victim’s uncle to sign blank papers in the wee hours of the night at 3 am while the family was grieving the loss? As Kemp indicated, the state is a hell hole of India and this is just another among many examples.

Immediate Attention Required.
Minor Hindu @NCSC_GoI Girl (15 yrs) allegedly Raped and Murdered by ILLIYAS MONDAL @ Seikh ILLIYAS MONDAL and 2 other Jihadis.

Today I visited the victim girls family at Vill Raghabpur, Maslandapur, PS - Gobordanga, North 24 PGNS.
(Victim Girl -… pic.twitter.com/Ne62zKOhCa

— Devdutta Maji (Modi Ji Ka Pariwar). (@MajiDevDutta) November 3, 2023

In the conclusion of his wonderful video on sex trafficking in India, Ross has shown what ultimately happens to a minor girl who has survived premature death, acid attacks, or sexual slavery. He interviews a 40-year-old woman who was sold for Rs 225 as a minor girl and forced into sexual slavery for 20 years, days before she died of AIDS and tuberculosis, living off the street in a corner on the streets of Bombay. Her face and tone show the anguish and pain she has been through and say how girls like her are forced to do unprotected sex, and the misery of their lives only ends with a premature death. Though she is only 40 years old, she could be easily mistaken for being a terminally sick 80-year-old. India is spending crores of rupees on institutions like the National Commission for Women (NCW), National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC), and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and they hardly scratch the surface of the enormous problem facing the most helpless of people. Poor people’s lives are hard enough and it is a shame that we cannot bring in stringent laws and protect the rights of our minor girls. Even if there are laws such as POSCO, corrupt local authorities compromise and subvert the laws. There is little deterrence even if there is a death sentence because it needs stringent and swift implementation to be effective. National institutions need to be given powers to pursue against compromised state authorities working with sex trafficking gangs. There is a desperate need for legally helping the afflicted families and having a national register by pertinent state and central organisations tracking and updating each case progress and ensuring justice is done. We cannot become an advanced nation if we allow such heinous crimes to go without punishment. This is a national shame. The writer is a US-based activist who has played a critical role in the introduction of paper trail for India’s Electronic Voting Machines called VVPAT. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News , India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.