Himalayan News Service

Nepalgunj, March 25:

There are 17,000 Nepali women forced into prostitution in India’s Delhi, Mumbai, Pune and Calcutta redlight centres alone. Anju Chhetri and Manju Thapa of the Asmita women’s publication group arrived at this number by conducting on-the-spot investigation in every brothel in the redlight areas of India’s four cities. As claimed by Chhetri and Thapa, 15,000 Nepali women in Mumbai, 300 in Delhi, 500 in Pune and 1,200 in Calcutta are sex workers. Chhetri and Thapa also claimed that over 5,000 Nepali women are taking up the world’s oldest profession in Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, Surat and Nagpur redlight areas. Speaking at the workshop related to the women and children trafficking, media engagement, study, conclusion and exchange of experiences held in Nepalgunj yesterday, Thapa admitted though that they could not claim that their research was 100% true. She added that an earlier estimate, which had put the number of Nepali women sex workers in India at between 1 to 2 lakh, had been proved baseless.

They said they had collected the figure by visiting Mumbai’s main brothels — Kamati, Bhiundi, Jamuna Mansion, Bareli, Grand Road and Bhandup; Puna’s Budhbarpet; Calcutta’s Sonagachhi, Kidderpore, Bowbazar, Kalighat, and Delhi’s GB Road. Thapa pointed out that most of these sex workers were below 18 years of age. Anju Chhetri said they talked personally to the Nepali women in the brothels of India in course of doing research. Chhetri added, “Most of them fall prey to the avarice of family members. Local brokers come second in the line of the process of selling them there.” Speaking at the workshop, Sabin Gurung of Maiti Nepal quoted the International Labour Organization (ILO) statistics, saying over 10,000 Nepali women are trafficked to India into the sex trade every year. Journalist Purna Lal Chuke, who presided over the workshop, said that the although researchers and rescuers did not face big problems in rescuing the women, the main problem was rehabilitating them. Till date, Maiti Nepal has rehabilitated 1,500 trafficked women.