Initially we learned from the girl, Munni, that she was trafficked 9 years ago, but after several conversations and sessions we learned that she had been trafficked almost 12 years ago, this is her story
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Munni lived with her family in a village in West Bengal, they lived in a mud house and her father was a struggling farmer. Due to financial difficulties, she was only able to study till the 4th standard.

Life was very difficult for her family; she would spend all day doing housework and was also required to do hard labour to help her father at the farm.

One day, along with her cousin sister, Puja, they went to Kolkata by train to roam the city and were having so much fun that both of them lost track of time. They realized it was late and hurried back to the railway station but had missed their train. It was already very late; the next train was several hours later and they were both worried as they had nowhere else to go, they couldn’t even contact anyone since their family didn’t own a phone. Seeing them there, two women approached the girls and asked them what happened, the girls told them they missed their train and the women seemed very concerned, they told them it wasn’t safe for such young girls to be alone at night. They offered the girls to stay in their home till the morning and then they could catch the train.

Munni & puja went along with them, the women seemed elderly and comforted them enough to gain their trust. The next morning, they gave them breakfast after which everything went fuzzy, they had been drugged.

When Munni regained her senses, she was in a rickshaw with one of the women, in Pune, and Puja was nowhere to be seen. Munni was frightened but couldn’t move as she was still dizzy. They reached a house inside which Munni was taken and left, which she soon found out was a brothel. She was kept under lock and key, threatened, abused and beaten because she refused to work. The brothel keepers starved her for days till she couldn’t tolerate it and was forced to give in. She worked in that brothel for 6 months and was then shifted to the new building in Budhwar peth, she was forced to prostitute there for many years and even tried to find out from others regarding her sister but couldn’t.

She wanted to leave, to try contacting her family but was scared because she didn’t know where her sister was, Munni felt she would be blamed for what happened to her and was also afraid that they wouldn’t accept her after all the things she had been forced to do. Even if she wanted to contact them, she couldn’t since all her belongings were kept by the women who bought her here.
Munni was forced to accept that there was no other life for her, she gave up hope and decided to do whatever it takes to survive.
In June, Rescue Foundation along with the Pune Police conducted a rescue operation where 21 girls were rescued, Munni was one of them.

We reached out to our partners in West Bengal upon learning where she was from, and after a few days heard back that her parents had filed a missing report 12 years ago. We had our partners reach out to them and spoke with Munni’s mother. She couldn’t believe her daughter was still alive, even after seeing her photos, she didn’t believe us and kept saying her daughter was dead.

We coordinated with our partners in West Bengal and they helped her mother reach our home in Pune. Munni was waiting for her mother to arrive, she jumped and hugged her, but her mother was still in shock, she caught her face, looked into her eyes, asked her questions of her childhood, then burst into tears and hugged her.