Exploitation Scenario #3

SCENARIO 3:
NEW DELHI, Nov. 21  -- On a filthy commercial street outside the a Gate near the New Delhi Railway Station, one cannot help smelling pee and rotting garbage while walking past shops selling goods from metal hardware to electric appliances.
The street is also famous for its secret sex trade -- not with prostitutes wandering around or standing at the corner, but with teenage girls forced into sexual slavery by thugs and gangsters.
Sonita, 14, from the suburban area, West Bengal, has just survived one year of life in hell in one of the sex houses on the dangerous street before being rescued by a religious group. She is now working in a small knitting workshop some three kilometers away from the nightmarish hole from which she thought she would never escape.
Like all Bengalese girls, Sonita has black hair and dark skin on which scars from beating and cigarette butts can be spotted easily.
Sonita's parents are peasants in West Bengal; they have six children. Because they were in debt to a moneylender, her parents sold Sonita to a relative of the moneylender for 2,000 rupees (about 40 U.S. dollars).
The woman took Sonita to New Delhi and handed her over to a vicious looking man who became her 'boss.' The man raped her that same night and forced her to work as a prostitute.
"Every day and night, we stood like cattle before customers, waiting for them to choose. The 'boss' and his wife took all the money. All we got was sour and bad food," Sonita said.
Some girls were often starved and beaten up for failing to attract customers, most of whom were drunks and drug addicts, she added.