Lakshmi

Lakshmi is from West Bengal, in the North-East of India. When she was twelve, her mother died. Due to extreme poverty she went to Calcutta to try and find work. While searching for work she was approached by a woman who sympathized with her, bought her sweets and promised her a well-paid sewing job. Instead, Lakshmi was drugged, taken to another city and sold to a brothel.

For two years she endured her body being sold to men and the abuse of the owner of the brothel. Occasionally the police would raid the brothel and the brothel-keeper would hide Lakshmi under the water tank on the roof until they were gone. Lakshmi was probably sold about three times before she was found and rescued from the brothels in Mumbai.

Lakshmi spent a couple of years in rehabilitation homes recovering from her trauma and gaining new skills. Now, a few years after being rescued from prostitution, she served as a social worker in a red light district counseling prostitutes and often taking their children to school.

Remembering well the darkest part of her history, she is always looking out for young girls who are forced to live the life from which she was delivered.

* Name changed

| Karishma |