By Katsuhiro Asagiri and Ramyatta Limbu
Kathmandu (APIC/INPS Japan) – My name is Mairi (pseudonym). I was 22 then. My husband worked as a long-distance truck driver, and we lived as a family of three with our baby daughter, only a few months old. Our life was modest, but happy. Because my husband’s job involved hauling cargo as far as Kathmandu and, across the border, to Darjeeling in India, he would be away for several days at a time. While caring for our daughter, I earned a living selling tea from a small roadside stall. ｜JAPANESE｜
That everyday life was abruptly shattered one day while my husband was away on a trip. Our infant suddenly developed pneumonia. When I took her to the village clinic, I was told there were no antibiotics and that the only option was to somehow get to a hospital in Kathmandu. From my village, Kathmandu was a seven-hour bus ride away.
As I sat there at a loss, one of my husband’s fellow drivers—someone we knew—offered help. “There’s a good hospital in Panitanki in India, better than Kathmandu,” he said. “If you want, I can take your child there immediately.”
Clinging to that offer like a lifeline, my daughter and I got into his vehicle and headed toward India. But the moment we crossed the border, the man’s demeanor changed completely. He sold us to traffickers.
We were taken from a border town in India to a brothel in Mumbai’s Kamathipura district, where we were resold as a mother and child for about 200 dollars. Mumbai was an unfamiliar city to me. I spoke only Nepali. I had nothing—no documents, no proof of who I was.
As soon as we arrived at the brothel, I was separated from my beloved daughter. When I resisted and begged them to return her, the men beat me and raped me. Then they threatened me: “Either you work here as a ‘sex slave’ until you pay off your debt, or you give up on your daughter’s life. Choose.”
To protect my daughter, I had no choice but to become a prostitute.
The “room” I was given—both workplace and living space—was barely larger than a stained, full-body mattress. It was only loosely partitioned by something like a hospital curtain. I was forced to take clients in that tiny space. At the time, thirteen girls were held there. Like me, they were Nepali girls who had been deceived and brought there. In that living hell, the only comfort I had was being surrounded by girls from my own country.
For the next two years, under the name “Pleasure,” I was forced—almost every day—to endure acts so degrading I cannot put them into words, often with close to twenty men a day. At first, I repeatedly pleaded with the brothel owner: “Please, let me see my daughter.” Each time I raised the subject, I was met with furious shouting and beatings. Eventually I stopped pleading. Instead, I tried to survive by holding my daughter’s smile in my mind and telling myself: “Someday I will get through this hell and take my child back.”
There were moments when a client offered to help me escape. But thinking of my daughter’s safety, I could not take the risk. Then one day, a woman washing dishes on the street began speaking to me kindly. She promised she would find my daughter. I endured each day and kept praying.
Then the day of liberation came. An NGO called MAITI NEPAL, working together with police, raided the brothel where we were being held. By coincidence—or perhaps grace—that was also the day the dishwashing woman kept her promise and brought my daughter to me.
My daughter was two and a half. Her body was covered in wounds. She had a skin disease and still could not speak. Yet I thanked God with all my heart that she was alive and that we had been reunited.
MAITI NEPAL took us into a shelter and searched for my husband on our behalf. Thanks to their support, a few months later the three of us were able to reunite in Kathmandu.
After that, my husband and I returned to Mumbai together as full-time staff of MAITI NEPAL. Along with MAITI NEPAL staff and compassionate Indian volunteers, we work every day to locate girls living through what my daughter and I endured—and to rescue them.
My daughter is now six. She is being raised by my mother in my hometown. I visit her every four to six months.
I had many reasons for returning to Mumbai, but the biggest was my daughter. Because of MAITI NEPAL, she can now dream of a normal life with her grandmother. But there are still countless people waiting to be rescued. Many of their daughters are growing up inside brothels, only to face the fate of being handed over—like their mothers—as the brothel owner’s “sex slaves.”
The girls I met in the brothel—girls forced to undergo abortion as many as twelve times before they turned fourteen; girls sold at only eight years old; girls tortured with acid thrown on their genitals for refusing clients; girls disfigured by relentless beatings; girls forced to serve while cigarette burns were pressed into their breasts and nipples—these girls are treated with contempt and ignored by society, dismissed as “prostitutes.”
If we—those who understand their pain—do not stand up, no one in the world will help them.
I do not want to be seen only as a “victim.” I intend to confront this issue with the determination of an activist—a survivor prepared to dedicate my life to ending human trafficking that tramples human dignity.
Kamathipura
Kamathipura is one of the world’s most notorious red-light districts. Locally it is said to be known as “Cages.” Women are forced to live in locked enclosures that, from the outside, resemble cages—hence the name. Maiti Nepal says many fair-skinned Nepali girls are among those coerced into prostitution there.
In our case, we were reunited with my husband after the rescue. But among the girls protected by MAITI NEPAL, many are refused by their families and have no way to return to their villages. It is rarer still for a spouse to accept them.
(Nepal Reporting Team: Katsuhiro Asagiri and Ramyatta Limbu, APIC)
INPS Japan