When Manju* came out of the brothel, she was exhausted. For weeks she had spent every last bit of energy planning her escape, putting those plans into motion and living in fear of discovery.

But even through the haze of relief and joy at being reunited with her husband, Manju could only think of one thing; punishing her captors.

Manju told the police how, while waiting for a train from Bangalore to her hometown, she had been drugged and pulled onto a bus. When she woke up midway through the journey, she found that the trafficker had taken her mobile phone and all her money. He threatened to kill her if she made a scene. Frightened, she kept quiet. But she never gave up hope.

The trafficker sold her to a brothel in Mumbai where two women beat her and burnt her with cigarettes until she agreed to work as a prostitute. She tried to escape but was brought back to the brothel. Manju says that two policemen witnessed this but were bribed to keep quiet.

Finally, a customer lent Manju his mobile phone so she could call her husband. He rushed to Mumbai and came to the brothel, pretending to be a customer. The next day, he returned with the police and rescued her. The two women who had enslaved her were arrested.

Justice and Care has taken up Manju’s case and will fight for her in court. We appealed to the Deputy Commissioner of police in Mumbai on Manju’s behalf and he took swift action against the officials who were bribed to turn a blind eye to Manju’s plight.

Because of Manju’s unwavering and compelling statement, a Mumbai court today refused to grant the two women bail and has ordered charges to be filed against them.

Soon Manju will testify against them in court. We believe with her that justice will prevail.

Visit our blog over the next few months for more updates on Manju’s case.

 * Name changed to protect victim’s identity

“This helps me vent and express my feelings,” says Anika, an 18-year-old victim of trafficking. Anika and 17 other teenage girls are at a movement therapy class initiated by Justice and Care at a shelter home in Bangalore.

Victims of trafficking suffer from trauma and rage because of what they have been through. It is difficult for them to process these emotions. As a result there are often conflicts and fights when they move into a shelter home. “We’ve noticed that the girls have a hard time understanding themselves and other people,” says one of our Aftercare Associates. “So we thought dance therapy was a wonderful way in which they could learn that.”

The girls meet once a week with a therapist who teaches them exercises that involve speaking with dance movements, trust falls and using movement to convey and read emotion. The therapy helps the girls relieve stress and communicate in healthier ways.

Shaina, 16, looks forward to each class and says, “I especially enjoy the exercise of falling backwards as my friends catch me. It has helped me to trust people and help others who depend on me.”

When they arrived in the city, the friend abandoned her at the bus stop similar to the one pictured above.

MUMBAI, 30TH JANUARY 2012: 24 year old Rachel* from a state in southern India, had been promised a job in Mumbai by a friend – the salary would be 10 times higher than what she was earning at that time. With two children, aged 10 and 14 to look after and an abusive husband who is an alcoholic and doesn’t bring in any money, Rachel knew she’d have to find work to support her two young children.

She told us that the friend who had promised her a job had brought her to Mumbai. She doesn’t remember anything about the journey – she fell into a deep sleep after she was given a cold drink in the bus. When they arrived in the city, the friend abandoned her at the bus stop. She stood there, waiting for hours for her to return until another woman approached her and offered to help her. She said Rachel could stay with her and took her home – home turned out to be a brothel. After two days, the woman told her she would have to work. Rachel felt that there were no other options for her, and said yes.

She didn’t see any of the money she earned. She had been in the brothel a fortnight before she was rescued.

Justice and Care suspect that Rachel’s friend and the woman were part of the same network of traffickers and were working together to trap Rachel. The brothel manager has been arrested and charged under sections of local anti-trafficking laws.

What Rachel wants more than anything, is to go home to her children after these two horrendous weeks, but until that time, she is in a shelter home where our Care and Intervention team is supporting her. We’re investigating her home situation to see how we can best support her and her family for a secure future.

* name changed to protect victim’s identity

A previously uneducated Prachi has worked very hard over the last year to finish her course in cosmetology

Prachi*, a 17-year-old girl who was rescued by police and Justice and Care in 2010, has graduated from cosmetology school and has started a job in a spa.

This is a big step for a previously uneducated Prachi who has worked very hard over the last year to finish her course in cosmetology through Save the Children, India.

Prachi, who had been forced to turn to prostitution because of her family’s poverty, had high motivation to learn. Right through her course, she envisioned a life for herself in which she could work and save money for the future. Keeping that ideal before her, she constantly pushed herself beyond what was asked of her. She would ask Justice and Care’s social workers, who have supported her since she was rescued,  to bring her books on English and General Knowledge because she believed it was important to know more about the world around her.

Prachi plans to save her earnings so that one day she can build a new and independent life for herself.

* name changed to protect identity

The repatriation process which can usually take up to two years, just took eight months this time round.

KOLKATA: On 12^thJanuary, 2012, seven Bangladeshi girls who had been trafficked across the border and sold into prostitution in India were reunited with their families. The girls, who are between the ages of 13 and 15, were rescued by police and Justice and Care in an operation on an escort agency in Bangalore in May of last year. The escort agency kept women and young girls captive in a boarded-up house and hired them out for sex. A total of 32 girls and women were rescued in the operation.

The girls were then safely housed in an aftercare facility in Kolkata where they were trained in tailoring, embroidery and learned how to read and write. Thirteen-year-old Reema even went back to school where she did well in Maths.

Even so, the question of when they would see their families again was always on their mind whenever our team met with them. “They were happy learning and amazed everyone by how quickly they picked up new skills,” says a member of our aftercare team, “but they longed to see their parents again. It was the one constant in their conversations with me.”

The repatriation process, which can usually take up to two years, took just eight months this time round, an encouraging sign that both India and Bangladesh are working harder to help victims of trafficking get home.

The Bangladesh National Woman Lawyers Association (BNWLA) helped the girls get back home once they arrived in Bangladesh. The organisation will be following up on the progress of the girls, who are excited to use their new skills to get jobs near their homes.

Members of Justice and Care’s aftercare team will be travelling to Bangladesh next month to meet the girls and ensure that they are doing well.

Whenever she managed to get her hands on a mobile phone without her handlers noticing, she would call her mother and beg for help.

After she was rescued, Meera told our staff that she had been brought to India by her boyfriend who had convinced her to elope with him. But instead of marrying her as he had promised, he had left her with a pimp and disappeared.

The two other women rescued had also been trafficked. One of them, 20-year-old Nysa* told police and our staff that an agent had promised her a job in a salon that would help her cover medical expenses for her mother who is mentally ill.

Two people have been arrested in connection with this case and booked under stringent sections of local anti-trafficking laws. Our legal team is following up to make sure the guilty are brought to book.

The three girls are now in a shelter home and our Care and Intervention team is supporting them.

*All names have been changed to protect identities

“At first I was very nervous,” says Jayati, 21, about her first job interview, “but as I began to answer their questions, I felt more and more at ease.”

We met Jayati four months ago, she had been referred by another organisation. She had been rescued from a brothel when she was just 11. Exposed to such trauma at such a vulnerable age, Jayati’s recovery has seen its highs and its lows. Her longing for a place to belong made her lose focus and take impulsive decisions that often had her in and out of programmes in the past.

But when you meet her, it is hard to miss her enthusiasm and good people skills. We enrolled her in a hospitality course with the Kotak Education Foundation. After she finished her course, our Care and Intervention team helped her find a job opening with a popular chain of cinemas. Jayati’s confidence did the rest. The company has offered her a job in one of their cinemas where she will be selling tickets, ushering and working at the snack bar. She will earn Rs. 6000 (approx. £75) a month.

“It’s been my desire for so long, to work and save up for the future,” says Jayati. Ask her what the future holds for her and she shyly discloses that she wants to become a social worker. “If God saved me, it was for a reason — so that I would be able to help other children like me,” she says.

Rajani especially excelled in embroidery and she presented the aftercare home with a wall hanging she created before she left

Lalita, Sweta and Rajani*, three young women rescued by Justice and Care on 29^th June, 2010  are now back home in Bangladesh.

Traffickers operating across the Bangladesh-India border had trapped the women by promising them high paying jobs in India’s big cities. “My husband had so many debts and we had no way to repay them. A job in India was our only way out,” said Rajani, who had to leave her husband and three children in Bangladesh and travel with a dalal** to an alien country where she knew no one and didn’t speak a word of the language.

But when the women arrived in Mumbai; their hopes for a way out of poverty quickly evaporated. Instead they were plunged into a brutal world of torture and abuse. They were sold to a brothel in Mumbai and forced to have sex with customers. They were kept under lock and key and none of them were given any money.

After they were rescued they began the long wait for repatriation to Bangladesh. Repatriation is a complex and lengthy procedure involving the co-operation and good will of both countries to identify victims of trafficking and provide them with papers for their safe return.

Lalita, Sweta and Rajani spent one-and-a-half years in an aftercare home in Mumbai, waiting to see their families again. But Justice and Care made sure that they put their time to good use. The women received counselling to help them deal with the trauma they had suffered. The Care and Intervention team also enrolled them in sewing, embroidery and literacy classes, according to their interests. Rajani especially excelled in embroidery and she presented the aftercare home with a wall hanging she created before she left. They now plan to use their new skills to find jobs or start small businesses in their villages.

The repatriation order finally came through and Lalita, Sweta and Rajani were very excited as they boarded the train for a 2000 km journey, heading for their hometowns on 27^th November.

Justice and Care’s partner organisation, Rights Jessore, met them on the other side of the border and made sure they got home safely. They will keep visiting the young women to help them do well and to ensure there is no risk of re-trafficking. Our own team will also visit them very soon.

*Names changed to protect identities

** local name for the traffickers who illegally move people, money and goods across the borders.

“She’s here!” Amrita* cried excitedly, running through the cluster of mud and brick huts in her village Indian-cow in West Bengal “Come and see!”

Soon friends and neighbours gathered around Amrita’s hut to catch a glimpse of the unlikely guests of honour, a docile brown cow trailing a skittish calf. Everyone congratulated the family and posed for pictures. The celebration began to take on the air of a village fair.

Two years ago, when Amrita and her cousin didn’t return from a festival her father Gopal, a rickshaw puller, did everything in his power to find her. He filed a Missing Persons Complaint and sold his livestock and everything he could to bribe the village elders to look for his daughter. But he heard nothing.

Determined to see his daughter again, Gopal contacted our partner organisation and for help.

Using information that our partner organisation gave us, the police and our team were able to rescue Amrita from a brothel in Pune. She had been drugged and abducted from the festival and had woken up in a brothel 1500 km away.

Amrita and her parents were thrilled to be reunited. But the 17-year-old girl carried a heavy burden of guilt. Her family had given up everything to get her back. They had sold their cows – a back up source of income when her father was too ill to run his rickshaw. We decided to help through a Livelihood Initiative.

We were able to buy Amrita not only the cow and a calf, but we could also arrange for insurance , pay for a medical examination and inoculation and open a bank account in Amrita’s name. The cow produces eight litres of milk a day, which the family can sell in the village. In a year’s time, the calf will also start producing milk and her income will grow. And when Amrita gets married, she will take the cows with her to her new home. She is overjoyed. “Now every time I see our cows, I feel that the good times we had lost have come back to us,” she said.

 What is a livelihood initiative?

Crushing poverty and the lure of good jobs often causes a victim to fall into a trafficker’s trap. Many of those who are rescued find themselves back at square one, with no job and even more difficulties at home than before they were trafficked. This puts these victims at high risk of being re-trafficked.

According to a 2010 study* “victims of trafficking (…) are frequently re- trafficked within two years or less of having exited a trafficking situation.”

A study in India found rates of re-trafficking to be as high as 25.8 per cent among women trafficked for sexual exploitation.**

At Justice and Care we strive not only to rescue, but to help rebuild lives. “After a rescue, when a girl is ready, we work together with her to come up with a livelihood initiative. Each girl has different needs, possibilities and interests, so likewise each initiative is different,” says a member of the Care and intervention team. “For some, it means an investment in education or skills training, for others it may mean some capital to start a business with.”

Our Care and intervention team works very closely on each livelihood initiative through the initial stages and remains in background even later to offer help and advice when needed so that every girl gets the most of the investment.

* Study done by the international organisation for Migration (IOM)

** Sen and Nair, 2004. NHRC Report on Trafficking in Women and Children in India 2002-2003

Our team found that boys as young as nine were made to work from 9am to 1am at night manufacturing bags for laptops, sports and lunch boxes. The children were crammed into tiny rooms, some in basements, with little or no ventilation and had to live, work, cook and eat in the same place. In the night they moved the machinery to the side of the rooms to clear small spaces in which they slept.

35 boys were rescued in all of which 13 were below the age of 14 years old. The majority of them are from Bihar in North India and some of them had been working in these conditions for as much as a year without breaks. Many of the boys told our team that a man from their village had approached their parents and asked them if they wanted to send their children to the city to work for “good pay”. One child said that his mother was given an advance of approximately £66 before he arrived in Bangalore. Because of this, he wouldn’t be paid his salary of around £20 a month until this had been accounted for.

When our staff asked 13-year-old Rajit* why he had come to Bangalore, he said, “My mother is dead and my father is very ill. If I don’t work, who will look after my family?”

Ten people have been charged with exploiting these children, who are all from impoverished backgrounds. Justice and Care is following all legal procedures to those who exploited them will not go free.

The children are now in a shelter home and our staff is working with them – we’ll do whatever it takes to help them and their families have a safe future in which they can live with dignity.

*Name changed to protect identity