MUMBAI, June 18: This is the first of a two part series on the rescue of commercial sex workers by G R Khairnar, which an Express Newsline reporter was privy to.

Kidnapped, bought, sold to a brothel, ruthlessly beaten and raped barely a fortnight ago, she was still learning to ``exist'' in her consigned cubbyhole. On Sunday evening, a panic stricken gharwali shoved her into a locker, threatening to skin her alive if she uttered a sound. Twenty minutes later, she was pulled out by strange men and women shouting, `Minor, minor. isko le chalo.' Petrified, she managed to say what had been drilled into her mind. ``I am 24 years old. I have two children in the village. I have no other means of livelihood. I want to work and live here.'' She cried if questioned for the next six hours. Yet, eighteen hours later, 12 -year-old Saudamini was ready to have her ten-year-old sister rescued and go home.

If a `rescue' reveals anything, it is the manner in which vulnerable women are delivered to circumstance and the mandates of an insensitive bureaucracy. Express Newsline accompanied suspended deputy municipal commissioner G R Khairnar on one such rescue operation at a city brothel on Sunday, where the main stumbling block in rescuing commercial sex workers is, not surprisingly, the glaring police-brothel owner nexus.

Two days after the rescue, for instance, Saudamini is still holed up in police custody. The rescue team was unable to locate her sister, who had been raped by an `agent', in the second raid. The police say they need Soudamini's help as she can identify the culprit, and she might be lodged in a rescue home for the night. Yet, given the police's attitude towards rescuing these girls, Saudamini's future is a question mark.

Also rescued on Sunday night was seven-year-old Lakshmi, who brothel owner Kamala claimed was her late brother's daughter. Kamala insisted on accompanying the child to the police station, refusing to let go of her.

Despite Kamala's conflicting tales - initially that she was a cook and that Lakshmi was `visiting' her, and later that Lakshmi's mother didn't know she `was in this line' - the trembling Lakshmi wanted to go with her, as she had no one else to go to.

The cosy relationship between the police and brothel owners may result in the girls being simply transported from one living hell to another. At the D B Marg police station, a certain Inspector Jadhav proclaimed: ``The girls should be allowed to go with their relatives.'' A while later, he brought in six women claiming to be aunts of those rescued. When the rescue workers strongly protested, he claimed, ``They are being allowed to see the girls so they can identify their relatives.'' Fortunately, none of the girls agreed to go with them.

Social worker Sumitra Singh recounts how a rescued girl identified a police constable who used to collect hafta from the gharwali. ``When she pointed him out to us at the police station, he fled,'' she says.

Ansuya Hemani, a social worker from the Manavjyot organisation indignantly says, ``It is often the police who alert the gharwallis, prompting them to hide the minors. They pretend to help us, but in front of the gharwallis, they are too scared to even pretend.''

Responding to these accusations, DCP (Zone 2) Param Bir Singh said, ``The allegation that the police have been leaking information is definitely not acceptable. In fact, all police stations, especially D B Marg, V P Road and Nagpada which are close to the red-light areas, have been instructed to give full support.'' He adds, ``Every night, the police check red-light areas and rescue minors and girls who want to escape.''

(Tomorrow: The fate of the girls after the gallant rescue)

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.