Prostitution in India: "cheap" women

A young Indian duped, sold and forced to prostitute in a brothel in New Delhi, India. Then, saved during a raid led by an NGO. A Bollywood movie scenario? No, rather a story that is far from being an exception. Our journalist takes stock of the scourge of sexual trafficking in India.

Ana * was sold in a brothel. And it is she who paid the high price: she lives today with AIDS. This 27-year-old Indian woman tells her story at the premises of STOP, a New Delhi NGO that fights against the trafficking and oppression of women and to whom she owes life. Her black hair shines on her frail shoulders as her memories darken her jet-black eyes.

When she left her hometown for New Delhi, some 1500 km away, she was 15 years old. His family was poor, his father was an alcoholic. A rickshaw driver, whom she considered a "brother", then promises him a job in the capital. He offered her to teach sewing for $ 200 a month. A high wage, knowing that today, 270 million Indians live on less than 60 cents a day.

Upon arrival in New Delhi, a woman welcomes her and takes her to a beauty salon. The hair is cut, the coating of cream discoloration of the skin.

"But why do you change my appearance? "

So that you are beautiful to your students and do not look like a villager, she replies, Ana remembers.

In the middle of the night, she is taken to a building. "Dozens of unclothed women were sleeping on the floor. No mattresses, nothing. We give him a room. She still believes she will teach sewing. In the morning, she learns that her job has nothing to do with clothes. That she is in a brothel of the GB Road, the hot New Delhi.

" I cried. I was beaten. I was forced. "

This story is not unique. "The numbers of this clandestine trade vary enormously, but it affects thousands of girls and women every year," says Sankar Sen, Coordinator of the book Trafficking in Women and Children in India .