S. said that her family was so poor they could barely manage to buy food. She eloped with a man from Dhaka, Bangladesh, who promised to take care of her. "How would I know that he had the intention of selling me?" said S., who is now an adult. "My life has so much pain." She was smuggled into India by river and forced to work in a brothel. She escaped with a woman she trusted who sold her to another brothel. She was rescued and taken to Sneha, a girl's shelter in West Bengal, India. (Smita Sharma)
Meena finished her daily morning chores and was on her way to school in rural West Bengal, India, when she met a man who professed his love for her. At the next meeting, he persuaded her to elope with him to Delhi with the promise of marriage. A week later, Meena found herself locked in a brothel in Agra.
Girls walk home from school in South 24 Parganas. For many girls in rural India, education ends before high school, which often costs money. Although child marriage is illegal, it is still widely practiced. In this region, with high rates of child sex trafficking, families also worry that girls are at risk on their long daily journey to school. (Smita Sharma)
Smita Sharma, aphotojournalist, met Meena in 2015, after she was rescued from the brothel by the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of the police. After speaking to her, she was astonished to learn how Meena was trapped so easily by a man she hardly knew. Smita has been investigating child sex trafficking since she met this young girl.
M., 16, shows marks of self-injury on her arm. M. used to be beaten by her alcoholic father. In December 2017, she left her home in South 24 Parganas and took a train to Sealdah Station in Kolkata. At the station, she met three boys who befriended her and then sold her to a brothel at the infamous Sonagachi red-light district. The local police station was tipped off by an informer about an underage girl being held captive, and the team went to the brothel and rescued her after three days. M. currently lives at a shelter for trafficked girls at South 24 Parganas, West Bengal. (Smita Sharma)
India has 400 million children below the age of 18, and thousands of children go missing every year. The situation is similar in Bangladesh, which shares a long, porous border with India. The government estimates that 50,000 girls are trafficked to India every year. Like Bangladesh, Nepal is an important source country for the human trafficking business. The National Human Rights Commission of Nepal (NHRC) found that in 2018-19 alone, 35,000 Nepali citizens were trafficked. The report also predicts that around 1.5 million Nepalis are currently at risk of being trafficked to India.
A West Bengal police boat patrols the Hooghly River in the Sundarbans, a watery area with dense mangrove forests that straddles the southern border between India and Bangladesh. The Indian state of West Bengal shares a long border with Bangladesh that includes many unguarded stretches, where traffickers can smuggle girls into the country. Traffickers often use rivers to avoid detection when smuggling girls into India. (Smita Sharma)
A photograph of S., 16, from police files. Shaheen has been missing from her village in West Bengal since 2013. She called her father in 2016, three years after her disappearance, telling him that she was being held as a sex slave by Kashmiri militants at Uri region, and that she had managed to escape and call from a public telephone booth. The police tried to trace her at that location but were unable to find her. Her family still hopes she will return home one day. (Smita Sharma)
In her research, Smita also discovered “employment” agencies that traffic girls into domestic servitude. They charge the employers for a year's labor and pocket the money, leaving the girls to live like slaves.
Smita photographed and interviewed more than 50 young survivors of sex trafficking in India and Bangladesh. She has also interviewed traffickers to understand the methods they use to psychologically manipulate vulnerable girls. Her direct intervention also led to the rescue of a 17-year-old girl from the red-light districts of Pune in India in 2018.
Sathi was married at 13 and had to endure physical and mental abuse from her alcoholic husband. She gave birth to a son and was later abandoned by her husband. She moved back to her parents' house in Chandannagar, India, where she worked as a nanny in the neighborhood. A few years later, she met a man, fell in love with him, and moved with him to Kolkata, where he sold her into the Kalighat red-light district. Her parents came in search of her, found her at a brothel and asked her to move back home. Sathi refused to go back because of the stigma and shame. Instead, she sent her son away with them. She went into severe depression and months later poured kerosene over herself in an attempt to immolate herself. She suffered burns and spent a month at a hospital. (Smita Sharma)
M., who is now 19, was lured from her home in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India, when she was 16 by a man who professed his love for her over the phone. After she met him, he proposed marriage. On a date, he drugged her and took her to Delhi, where he sold her to a brothel. In the brothel, she was beaten, starved and forced to have sex with up to 30 customers a day. During two police raids, the brothel owner hid her. She was rescued on a third raid. (Smita Sharma)
Sharma's initiative, called We Cry in Silence, investigates the widespread but underreported issue of trafficking minors for sex and domestic servitude between Bangladesh, Nepal and India. The project unveils the vulnerability of girls and highlights what leads them into the traps of traffickers. The goal is to understand this complex, global issue at the local level, open a dialogue and move people to work towards a solution.
Two sisters, Simran and Sakina Khan, collect drinking water from a public well at a village in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, India. For many girls in rural India, education ends before high school, which often costs money. Boys are given preferential treatment, while girls are expected to do household chores. Poor families are more likely to put money toward the education of boys and wedding expenses for girls. (Smita Sharma)
When she was 12, S. left her home in Narayanganj, Bangladesh, with a family acquaintance who promised to find her a job in Dhaka. She was handed over to a man who smuggled her into the Indian state of West Bengal, from where she was taken to a brothel in Mumbai and sold. S. was enslaved for two years before police freed her and sent her to a shelter. Six months later, she met a woman who said she would take S. back to Bangladesh but instead sold her to a brothel in Namkhana, a small town in West Bengal. After being rescued once more, S. has been staying at a shelter waiting for her repatriation. (Smita Sharma)
S. and N. at home in Khulna, Bangladesh. At 14, their daughter Sayeda was trafficked to a brothel in Mahishadal by a boy she had met at a dance school. For three years, she was forced to perform sex work at all hours. Sayeda was rescued and sent to a shelter in West Bengal, India. She was preparing to return home to Bangladesh when she died from a liver problem caused by excessive drinking at the brothel. (Smita Sharma)
We Cry in Silence, with the testimony of these victims, will be published as a photo book by FotoEvidence and distributed to schools and college libraries in India to create permanent evidence and raise awareness. The book and a 'zine will also be made available to local law enforcement agencies, with the goal of sensitizing them to the dangers young women face and the methods of traffickers.
The book will have text in three languages, in Bengali, Hindi and English.
If you wish to contribute to this initiative, click here. — FotoEvidence
Photojournalist Smita Sharma and the cover of her new book "We Cry In Silence.' (FotoEvidence)
Smita Sharmais an award-winning photojournalist and visual storyteller based in Delhi, reporting on critical human rights, gender and social issues in her own community as well as in the Global South on assignments for Human Rights Watch, National Geographic Magazine, TIME magazine and other publications.
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