Benaras: The Holy City where Cows are Safer than Women and Children
It was in Benaras that I was introduced to four young girls who are all being helped by Guria (http://guriaindia.org/), an organization that is fighting sex trafficking, child prosititution and second generation prostitution. (Children are defined as individuals below the age of 18 years.) A child who is trafficked can be sold into prostitution and when this girl has a child, s/he can be easily assimilated into the trade. All three aspects of this work are linked because one leads to another. Therefore, Guria works on these three inter-connected issues:
First, by preventing the source from supplying the prostitutes. This is done by raising awareness at the village level because most young girls are fooled or lured away from their homes. Their innocence of matters outside their own village is used to get them away, and then shattered very soon after they are brought outside of the safety of their own network of people.
Secondly, by organizing rescues - some of which are in response to a particular situation they have been informed of; and some of which are the result of months of risky reconnaissance of a location which is known to run child prostitutes.
Thirdly, by rehabilitating rescued prostitutes which is done by giving them monies and help for appropriate livelihood generation; by giving them monthly compensation while their case is in progress at the Court (though cases go on much longer than the compensation); helping them with educational needs, as required; by locating them with either their parents (because Shelter Homes are notoriously corrupt) or in witness protection (which is not provided by the government).
Lastly, by giving them legal help. This is an excruciatingly long process which can go on for decades. While I was visiting, Ajeet Singh (the founder of Guria), received legal notice to appear as witness in a case that had been filed in 2005! We are now talking 18 years down the line. The case had not been addressed! There are multiple challenges in this part of the process because the entire system is malfunctioning - but systematically - so that outwardly, it gives an appearance of following well-laid out channels of proof and documentation etc. Actually, the innards of the process have been taken out of the body of justice.
At Guria’s office, I was met with 4 of the many girls who have been helped by them. These were all girls whose court cases are on-going; i.e., justice has not been given to them, but it has not been denied as yet either, nor have they succumbed to pressure (bribe or threats of violence against them and/or their family) to withdraw their cases.
Hard at work at the non-formal education center in Sivdaspur, Benaras’ red-light area, where these children of the local prostitutes come in to play, laugh, meditate and hang out after school. Part of the work of prevention of second generation prostitution involves healing present trauma as well.
Photo credit: Guria India
I met with Smita (all names are changed), a young girl of 18 years who had just given her 12th grade Board Exams (crucial all-India exams at the end of your last year of schooling). She was an outwardly healthy looking girl, dressed simply and conservatively in a salwar-kameez. She came with her mother who was wearing a sari and gold jewellery, with sindoor (vermilion, marking a married Hindu woman) in her hair parting. In 2014, when Smita was 14 years old, she was on her way back from after-school academic enrichment ‘coaching’ class. She was not alone, but with her younger brother who was 7 years old at the time.
They were stopped by their next door neighbor who beat up her younger brother and forcibly carried away Smita - from a quiet road, but one that was nevertheless, in the middle of the city. This is easily done with some chloroform and a waiting car with a chauffer ready to go. Smita was carried as far as Delhi and placed in a house. She was raped repeatedly over 8 days by multiple men and boys (called ‘juveniles’ under the law). She was kept in a locked room. Horrifying as this was, she overheard the main kidnapper planning to sell her for a few lakhs into the sex trade. Keeping her head about her, she managed to escape and made it by train as far as Allahabad. From there, she begged the phone of someone and called her parents.
In the meantime, her parents who knew exactly who the kidnapper was (thanks to the first-hand testimony of their own son who had been present) went to the police. The police refused - outright refused - to file a FIR (first information report). So, the case is not even noted down. It does not exist. This is normal procedure in Benaras. The first response - if you can call it ‘first response’ - from the police is refusal to file the case. In rural areas, they will kick the victim out of the police station and just tell them to shut up. In semi-urban areas, they will just dismiss them casually or put them off day after day after painful day.
The police know who the kidnapper is and they know his family. They know he has done it before and will do it again. So, why keep quiet about it? For the logical reason that they are in on the cut. They are part of the criminal nexus. When someone approaches them to file a report, they put off the victim and call the aggressor to ask for their share of the loot. This is standard operating procedure. Period.
The parents then approached the kidnapper’s mother and begged her for their daughter’s return - not ‘safe’ return because everyone knows that it is too late for that. They just wanted their daughter returned. They promised not to file a court case against the kidnapper. Again, they were summarily dismissed by the parents of the kidnapper who know that their son is part of the racket for selling girls and makes money off this business.
Finally, the parents approached Guria and accompanied by their staff, the police took down a FIR, i.e., it was officially acknowledged 4 days after the girl had been carried away that she was indeed missing. Having received a phone call from the girl, a rescue was carried out quickly. The girl had been advised to sit quietly and inconscpicously at the railway station, because the trafficking nexus has a wide and thorough reach. If the traffickers discovered her at Allahabad, she would be spirited away from there before she could be rescued. Fortunately, she was found and brought home.
Guria filed a case along with the girl and her family. The case is on-going. For once, the kidnapper was placed behind bars and denied bail so that he is still in prison while the case moves slowly through the halls of justice. A lot of pressure was brought to bear on the police to deny the kidnapper’s bail. Even with him in jail, Smita and her family are still stressed - threats, pleadings (by the kidnapper’s mother who refused all help to them previously) and of course, bribes are all offered.
None of the victims are brought back to the same environment they left from immediately. They go to a relative’s house or the family moves house (if they can) so that the girl is not brought back to the same place to relive her nightmare. Smita stayed ill for days and stopped eating after she came home. She talked of killing herself. After 4 years, she is still often quiet and depressed, though she is doing all that is expected of her by her family. She has received counseling from Guria’s staff though the trauma, undoubtedly, runs deep.
Meeting with the Woman’s Vigilance Group in a village, close to Benaras. Women in villages are outspoken and feel free to both answer questions and ask you questions, without hesitation.
Photo Credit: Guria India
So…in Benaras, it is easy to lay hands on a girl or a woman. Immunity from a non-existent, completely, utterly compromised system of (lack of) law and order is well known to the locals. They exploit it. But the government of Uttar Pradesh has very strict laws on the books for the protection of cows - the holy animal of the Hindus. And those laws are stringently implemented. Cows have protected status. Even the women in Guria’s Women’s Vigilance Group in the village, complained bitterly to me: “If a (male) calf used to be born, we would sell it away for money. Now, we cannot. We do not need it in the field. We have no where to keep it. If we leave it in the field, it will eat up the crops we planted. We do not know what to do. The government won’t allow us to touch it.”
This is just one example of the absurdity of the laws and their implementation in Uttar Pradesh. Girls and women live with less freedom and less protection than the cows of this state. You will be socially shamed, ostracized and possibly lynched for touching a cow; but a woman, a girl … she is fair game for all to do with as they please.
