The girls stolen from the streets of India
The death of a student who was gang-raped on a Delhi bus has prompted anguished soul-searching about the place of women in Indian society. The widespread killing of female foetuses and infants is well-documented, but less well-known is the trafficking of girls across the country to make up for the resulting shortages.
Rukhsana was sweeping the floor when police broke into the house.
Wide-eyed and thin, she stood in the middle of a room clutching a broom in her hand. Police officers towered above her, shouting questions: “How old are you? “How did you get here?”
“Fourteen,” she replied softly. “I was kidnapped.”
But just as she began to say more, an older woman broke through the circle of policemen. “She is lying,” she shouted. “She is 18, almost 19. I paid her parents money for her.”
As the police pushed the girl towards the exit, the woman asked them to wait. She leaped over towards the girl and reached for her earrings. “These are mine,” she said, taking them out.
A year ago, Rukhsana was a 13-year-old living with her parents and two younger siblings in a village near India’s border with Bangladesh.
“I used to love going to school and I loved playing with my little sister,” she remembers.
Her childhood ended when one day, on the way home from school, three men pushed her into a car.
“They showed me a knife and said they would cut me into pieces if I resisted,” she said.
After a terrifying three-day journey in cars, buses and on trains, they reached a house in the northern Indian state of Haryana where Rukhsana was sold to a family of four – a mother and her three sons.
For one year she was not allowed to go outside. She says she was humiliated, beaten and routinely raped by the eldest of the three sons – who called himself her “husband”.
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