India's Lost Girls Our World

programme disturbing. Young, vulnerable and terrified. Victims

of a growing trade which is destroying society while making

some rich. Tens of thousands of girls go missing in India every

year. Sold into prostitution, domestic slavery and increasingly,

into marriage. In an 1990s, technologies gave parents a

technology of finding out the sex of their unborn babies. Today the

whole of northern India is feeling the effect of female foetuses being

aborted. It is such a social issue that every house is facing this

problem. Every house in the plunger, there are young boys who are not

getting girls. When you talk to them, they are frustrated. This is

fuelling organised crime across the country. Many accuse politicians of

turning a blind eye. They are not interested, we have to still don't

tell them it is happening. So many girls are dying and so many girls

are being triplicate. We're not talking about hundreds but

In being Dali, Sunderbans means beautiful Forest. The islands are

one of India's natural treasures. But not many tourists come to these

remote lesser-known parts of this Sunderbans. Life here has always

been a struggle. Now in addition to poverty, the people of the

Sunderbans face another problem. Every year thousands of children,

mostly girls disappear. In this district, every village is missing

children. The queue of anxious parents outside the office of a

local group that tries to help victims of trafficking in their

families. This father says a few days ago, his teenage daughter went

to see a doctor and never returned. What I don't understand is why did

you come here and not to the police. TRANSLATION: How many cases like

this one do you get? Two every day. That is a lot. This man took me

around the islands to meet some of the families he works with. He

tells me trafficking peaked after a deadly cyclone destroyed the rice

paddies around the area five years ago. Leaving many without any

source of income. This family was among them. So when a neighbour

offered his 16-year-old daughter work in the city, they jumped at

We told her about an organisation in delegate has rescued hundreds of

girls. He said he wants to meet them. Suddenly hopeful they may

find her, he gets ready for the long journey. Statistically odds

are high that if you are a girl growing up here, at one point or

another someone will come up to you and offer you a better life in a

city. In every single village we have been too, we found families

who have missing children, most of them are girls. Across India, every

year, tens of thousands of girls are either forced or tricked into

making a journey that changes their lives for ever. Her father will

travel the same route that his On the boat, after the Sunderbans,

then a long bus journey past the impoverished villagers of West Bank

With its bustling market San sprawling suburbs, Calcutta it is

both a source of and destination for young women. Many trafficking

victims of bought in from across the Bordeaux in Bangladesh but an

increasing number are Andean. And it is not just girls from villagers.

At the end of the narrow lane in a Calcutta suburb I visit the family

that lives in constant fear. Their daughter it is no longer accepted

here. She was 15 when two years ago, neighbourhood boys invited her to a

local fair. There somebody, strange offer to have a soft drink. The

next thing she remembers his waking up on a train. A day later she felt

herself in a brothel in deli where for seven months, every day she was

Her mother finally tracked to down and with the help of police,

rescued her. She got her daughter back but not delight she has worked

so hard to build. Neighbours do not talk to them any more. The house

has been stoned and those who Trafficking humans is an organised,

complicated and secretive trade. It took us weeks to set up a meeting

with a man who sells women for a He tells me traffics on average 200

girls a year and makes around $1,000 from each. Most of them a 12,

The trafficker also said that while he still pays local politicians and

individual policemen for protection, the central government recently

awareness campaign has made its operations more difficult. At the

police headquarters in cult putter, they deny charges of any

involvement. This is one of the allegations which may be regarding

the police. Police this part of the human trafficking. The fight is

daily on. And activists say at the police level things have improved.

But change is slow. Every police station in India is now supposed to

have anti- trafficking police officers. A district rebels, they

have set up anti- trafficking units. That looks good on paper but look

at the reality of India's fight against one of its greatest

organised crime networks. This is the centre of anti- trafficking

activity for the whole of West Bengal. Two computers, if you find

in thousands of cases. Detectives and her small team are overwhelmed.

We're trying to solve this problem but we need more manpower and more

support. We need a Xerox machine we use telephones and laptop. We need

these things. The what makes it a more -- what makes the work more

difficult is that traffickers can easily get out on bail or bribed

the way out of prison. Lack of resources, widespread corruption

and the nature of trafficking makes the trade if humans and extremely

Try to detect that child changing hands in this sea of people. This

place is overwhelming. It is so easy to become invisible in the

crowd. I couldn't tell you whether the man I passed his father

travelling with his daughter orate human trafficker transporting a

victim. What I can tell you is that at this moment, at this train

station, there are girls being sold. Making their way through the crowd,

people are about to board the same train with his daughter was taken.

They call this the human traffic in train. Police say dozens of girls

make this journey every day. They never know where they will end up.

A change of clothing and the place where his daughter was supposedly

taken. That's all he has with him. That information he takes to this

man. The organisation works with the police to track down and rescue

girls. He is bizarre of human They ask the team to start

searching. She could be anywhere in this big city as a brothel or it as

a servant in the house of the middle class. Or she may have been

taken further, to the northern states where there is a new and

growing market for women. This is the man's world. The men here are

famous for being strong, fit, and single. Fortunate to be born into

one of the wealthiest states. Fortunate perhaps to be born at all.

One estimate suggests that 10 million girl foetuses have been

aborted in India in the last two decades. The UN says it's a problem

of genocide. The Indian government disputes the estimates. In reality,

life here is hard to argue with. While prostitution and domestic

work are still the main cause of human trafficking, trafficking for

marriage is on the rise. Rishi Kant took us along to the rescue mission.

The girls is a minor child. We will go and do raid. If that girls is

there, we will rescue her. We are going to have basically your group

and the police from West Bengal and other places working together to

rescue this girl? Exactly. Do you The girl is at home when we enter.

Minutes later the woman who brought Before she let's the girl though

she takes out her earrings she had been given. As the police lead her

away, she follows. Rishi Kant orders her out of the car and the

human traffic that need to be separated. This is below all. She

has not skid she screams. -- she is not scared. A few hours later at

the police station she is still insisting she's done nothing wrong.

We don't have enough girls here. Many people by girls here she cries.

In a car outside the girl tell the police a different story talking

about humiliation, beatings and break up. Her father listens and

soon he will take his daughter home. For every rescue girl their

thousands to never leave and the attitude shows no sign of change.

In one village here, at a meeting of influential local elders. Before

the rape case in New Delhi, they discussed the worrying rise of

Raper in this area. This is how one of them explains the violence

These women were never given any choice. This is a Community Support

Centre For victims of human trafficking. Some of them have

settled here and some do not leave because they're too ashamed to go

back home. Or are expected to produce a son. 25-year-old was

trafficked and she says she was forced to have to abortions until

she finally gave birth to a baby One week later after she was

rescued we went to the village on the border with Bangladesh. Rishi

Kant came to check up on her to discuss the next steps with her

parents. This is incredible, the villages all following us to the

home. She has received a lot more attention than she is used to. Here,

she feels safe to speak about the She was never allowed outside. It

She does not want to speak about rape. Her parents are worried about

She said she just wants to be at home and with so much attention and

gossipy, it's not safe for her to be staying here. Everything is at

stake, her life, identity, her marriage and her image in society.

Everything has been lost and if you don't get support from the state by

the administration it's ten times more problematic. This is probably

where she will end up, at least for the time being. It's a private

shorter and it's the best in the state. It's home to 150 girls. Some

as young as ten years old. They need more resources and space to

accommodate the growing demand. state is killing its own women.

This so much infanticide and there's a problem with the boy to

girl ratio. They take the girls to the poorer areas. It's also lack of

awareness and knowledge. Even a lack of gender sensitivity. Even

lulling their own girl chock children. -- loving their own gold

children. The has plenty of people here who do love their daughters.

They still hope and wait for news. Increasingly, families here and