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Gita

2011 (Narrative date)

Experts estimate millions of women and children are victims of sex trafficking in India. Traffickers use false promises of employment or arrange sham marriages in India or Gulf States and subject women and girls to sex trafficking. In addition to traditional red light districts, women and children increasingly endure sex trafficking in small hotels, vehicles, huts, and private residences. Traffickers increasingly use websites, mobile applications, and online money transfers to facilitate commercial sex. Children continue to be subjected to sex trafficking in religious pilgrimage centres and by foreign travellers in tourist destinations. Many women and girls, predominately from Nepal and Bangladesh, and from Europe, Central Asia, Africa, and Asia, including minority populations from Burma, are subjected to sex trafficking in India.

Gita was just 10 years old when she was taken by her aunt and uncle and sold to a brothel in India. Gita was rescued and now works with a charity to prevent human trafficking in to India.

My aunt and uncle were the ones who took me… I don’t have a father. My mother was blind. I was the only child. My dad passed away when I was little.

I was 10 years old. My aunt said lets go. She told me we would be back in 3 days. So I said okay and decided to go. She took me to Pune and sold me there. I didn’t even know Hindi then, I didn’t know anything.

I said to someone there “Please call my aunt. I want to go home. I want to go back. There’s no one to feed my mother.”

When I said this, they said, “You’re aunt has sold you here. She’s gone. She won’t come back now.”

It was then I realized that the place I had been sold to was a brothel.

[Gita was rescued and now works to prevent trafficking into India]

As told to documentary makers at MTV Exit.