Overview of India (2024)
Population: 1.44 billion (USA 342 million)
Square miles: 1.14 million (USA 3.16 million, excluding Alaska)
Density: 1,263 people/sq mile (USA 108 people/sq mile)
Predominant Religion(s): Hindu 80% and Islam 15%
GDP per capita: $2,850 (USA $83,060)
Population: 1.44 billion (USA 342 million)
Square miles: 1.14 million (USA 3.16 million, excluding Alaska)
Density: 1,263 people/sq mile (USA 108 people/sq mile)
Predominant Religion(s): Hindu 80% and Islam 15%
GDP per capita: $2,850 (USA $83,060)
"I felt very scared that evening and I refused to eat anything. I soon noticed that many men were coming in and out of the house and I realized it was a brothel. I began howling and shouting. I said that I wanted to leave. Renu Lama told me that I was ignorant. She said that I did not just come easily and I could not go easily. She said that I had been bought and I would have to work as a prostitute in order to pay them back."
"On the fourth day that I was in the brothel, my first client came to me. I refused to have sex with him. He had already paid so he grabbed me and tried to rape me. I fought him off. He had managed to get my clothes off but he was very frustrated because I was resisting him so much. He stormed out and asked for his money back. A couple of the brothel owners (voluntary prostitutes) came in and beat me. When they were done, the same man came back in."
"Some of my associates overheard the owners saying that they were also planning to sell me to a brothel in Sarat because I was too much trouble. I decided that I could not wait until the boy returned from Nepal. I had to try again to run away. I asked some of the other girls to run away with me, but they were too afraid. We had been told that we would be killed if we tried to run away. But I had determined that I would rather die than stay in the brothel. The other girls pooled their money together and came up with two hundred rupees. In exchange for the 200 rupees, I promised that if I made it out alive, I would get help for them. "
"On the fourth day that I was in the brothel, my first client came to me. I refused to have sex with him. He had already paid so he grabbed me and tried to rape me. I fought him off. He had managed to get my clothes off but he was very frustrated because I was resisting him so much. He stormed out and asked for his money back. A couple of the brothel owners (voluntary prostitutes) came in and beat me. When they were done, the same man came back in."
"Some of my associates overheard the owners saying that they were also planning to sell me to a brothel in Sarat because I was too much trouble. I decided that I could not wait until the boy returned from Nepal. I had to try again to run away. I asked some of the other girls to run away with me, but they were too afraid. We had been told that we would be killed if we tried to run away. But I had determined that I would rather die than stay in the brothel. The other girls pooled their money together and came up with two hundred rupees. In exchange for the 200 rupees, I promised that if I made it out alive, I would get help for them. "
When Mona was 13 years, her mother died and her father remarried. The stepmother was uncomfortable with Mona and wanted to send her away for some job, where she would be able to look after herself. Along came a ”contractor” who arranged jobs for youngsters as domestic help, etc. He paid a certain sum of money to the stepmother and took Mona to a town far away. He got her a job in a massage parlour as a ‘receptionist’. Even before Mona got to know the work profile, she realized that she had been trapped into sexual exploitation. She had become a sexual slave to the ‘customers’ who frequented the place for full-body massage.