While India introduced tougher child rape laws in 2018, advocates say the laws are not properly enforced. But what can I do? I can’t say much because this is our tradition.”įilming undercover, 101 East discovers that girls as young as 10 are being offered to men. “I feel like I am born in the wrong place, doing the wrong thing.
She now has a two-year-old daughter of her own and says she feels trapped. Meneka’s mother forced her into prostitution at the age of 15.
Most of the Bachara men say discrimination stops them from getting jobs, so generations of girls have supported their families through prostitution. The girls are from the Bachara tribe, an unprivileged-caste community known as Dalits. Girls as young as 10 are being forced to work as prostitutes – and it is their own families selling them to passing truckers. A notorious highway in the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh is the site of a shocking trade.
