I want my life story to be known to all. I want to tell all the sisters who are toiling against their wish, ‘Take my story as an example. Do not get disheartened.’ … I want to give them that hope in life. I was once like them. But now I am standing on my own feet.
Salila (name changed due to confidentiality) will never forget the day she set out for a new job in a nearby city. She had been offered the position by a man from her village who recognized her teenage ambition and drive, and she trusted him when he told her of a good job only half a day’s train ride from her hometown.
They boarded the train together — but by nightfall they had not yet arrived at their destination, and Salila realized that something was terribly wrong. “He said it would only take a day, but two days are already gone and I am still inside the train. What is this man up to? I was really scared,” Salila later told IJM staff.
Her once-friendly companion told her that if she tried to leave him or tell anyone he was taking her by force, he wold have her parents killed. “I just had to keep quiet,” she recalls. “I did not want to put my parents in danger.”
The brothel was a place ruled by violence and despair. When Salila attempted to refuse the brothel’s customers, she was beaten and threatened until she submitted to the violence. She was subject to constant physical and emotional abuse.
Salila’s captors worked to make her invisible. They dragged her through alleyways of sewage to hide her in a back room of the brothel and forced her to give a different fake name to everyone she met to ensure that she would not be found. Salila had never been to Mumbai and did not know where she was in the city. The brothel owners convinced her that if she were found by police on the streets, they would simply return her. There was no hope. Escape was impossible.
Girls and women trafficked to a Mumbai brothel stored their belongings in this small loft before they were freed through IJM intervention in collaboration with local authorities.
The IJM team worked with local police to set up a sting operation to rescue the girls. On a December night, local authorities and IJM staff entered the brothel and safely removed Salila and five other girls held there against their wills.
Salila was free. The night she was rescued, “I could not believe my eyes,” she says. She left with IJM staff, who ensured that she was placed in a safe aftercare home.
The wounds of Salila’s abuse where deep. But, through the care, stability and support she experienced in her new home, she began to heal and regain parts of her life she had thought were lost forever.
Simply put, Salila began to live again. She completed her education and was trained in many career skills; she developed warm relationships with new friends at the aftercare home.
“We thought we would have to live and toil there [at the brothel] forever, but it did not happen,” she explains. IJM staff “not only released us from that wretched life, but they showed us the way to a respectable life and gave us confidence.”
Salila now works for a jewelry manufacturer fixing the intricate jewel work on bangles. She and another young woman share an apartment, and Salila remains in close contact with IJM staff. She has a savings account in her own name and has built a stable life. In freedom, Salila has hope: “I can take care of myself well,” she explains. “Now, I can help others also.”
Today, Salila knows freedom and security, but if IJM had not been able to intervene at the brothel, she would still be held captive.
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