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New Delhi: It’s another word for sleaze in the Capital. Delhi’s red-light area of Garstin Bastion Road, named after a British civil servant said to have brought all of Delhi’s brothels to one place, is infamous but it does see some good police work every now and then. Last Saturday, a joint police team from Delhi and West Bengal did just that: they raided ‘Kotha number 56’ on GB Road and retrieved an ‘escaped’ sex worker’s son, her only child, from the clutches of a pimp and the brothel’s madam. They even took a FP journalist along to see the living hell most of us do not know exists in the heart of the Capital. This is his account:

This story begins in September 2021 when 25-year-old Ismat (name changed) went missing from her village in West Bengal. Although she was named in a missing person report only in January this year, Ismat had eloped with a man called Nurul Hasan, taking her three-year-old son to what she fancied would be a better life.

In a turn of events that must have thousands of parallels nationwide every year, her partner turned out to be something completely else, bringing Ismat to Delhi and selling her, son included, for Rs 10,000 to a pimp called Bobby from GB Road.

In Ismat’s dark new world, the child became surety. If she did what she was told, the child would be looked after.

Ismat went to work. For every day of the ensuing nine months, she received customers in a dingy second-floor room, all of seven feet by five feet. Despite the close watch kept on her, she did manage to send a text message and selfie to her brother back in their Bengal village.

The text message said she was at a brothel in Delhi and that ‘something bad would happen’ if there were to be no rescue.

By then, the missing person report and the records of the selfie and text message had come together for the West Bengal Police. They leaned on the Mission Mukti Foundation, a Mumbai-based Non-Governmental Organisation dedicated to the cause of rescuing women, including minors, from such situations. The phone Ismat used to send the message and selfie was traced to the Kamla Market Police Station area which includes GB Road.

Virender Singh, director of Mission Mukti Foundation, told FP that it took his team nearly two months to trace Ismat. “We sent several volunteers from our team posing as clients to search for Ismat, until she was found one day on the second floor of Kotha Number 56,” he said. He immediately informed the WB Police and asked them to prepare for a raid.

The first raid of a joint party of WB and Delhi Police happened on 20 May this year. They did not find Ismat, who in a bizarre turn of events surfaced days later in her own village, but without her child.

Sub-Inspector Sohel Iqbal, in the police party from West Bengal and the in-charge of the Bakultala Police Post, couldn’t wrap his mind around what had happened. As the investigating officer (IO) of Ismat’s case, Iqbal didn’t give up.

Later, Ismat told Iqbal that she had been at the brothel during the first raid but was confined to a secret room with her hands tied up and mouth taped shut. The police had even broken into a few rooms but missed hers, so cleverly was it tucked away in the warren of rooms and cubicles that Kotha No. 56 is.

Later that same day, Bobby took Ismat to an isolated place some four hours away from GB road. He raged and raged, as Ismat cowered in fear. “They said I will get my child only if I ask the police to back off,” Ismat told Iqbal. She was sent back to her village by train, and told to return for her child only after straightening things out with the police.

The raid

Ismat straightened more things out than Bobby would have expected.

At 2.15 pm on Saturday August 20, the joint team of two state police forces accompanied by two volunteers of the Mission Mukti Foundation descended on Kotha No. 56. Two vehicles pulled up outside the place.

The police party from WB had two male constables, a woman constable, a sub-inspector; a woman constable and three male constables were from the from Kamla Nagar Market PS. Ismat was with them.

The WB cops wanted Ismat to identify the brothel madam Babita, the pimp and the place where she had been confined during the first raid. Ismat was fearful, and needed constant reassurance that she was safe, and that her child would be found.

The brothel stairs were dark, dingy and wide enough for only one person to use. On every floor there were two separate brothels: one on either side of the staircase. Each side had about a dozen sex workers. A foul stench hung heavy in the gloom.

At the 2nd floor brothel, there were just four or five sex workers on benches that line the walls. Given the numbers on the ground floor, this was unusual; almost as if news of the raid had somehow got here before the cops did.

All queries about the brothel madam and Bobby fell on deaf ears; sex workers refused even to identify Ismat as a former co-worker. Ismat then led the team to an extremely narrow and dark stairwell, hidden from plain sight in one unlighted corner of the main aisle. The stairs led to another lobby-like area that had small cubicles lined on both sides. Ismat stopped in front of one of them, and broke down: it was here that she had lived and serviced clients.

Ismat along with WB police officials.

Most of the cubicles were locked, but Ismat’s former quarter was open. It was more like an isolation cell, with just enough space for a thinly-cushioned stretcher-like pod. A single wall-mounted fan was the only other fitting. Another open cubicle was strewn with women’s undergarments.

A woman constable offered a distraught Ismat some water, and even washed her face.

Meanwhile, another sex worker who was just coming out of a bath recognised Ismat. The Sub-Inspector took this chance and began to question her. Sonia (name changed) confirmed that Ismat had lived and worked there some time back. She said the girls take these quarters on rent from the owner of the place, but refused to share any details about them.

“Only a few girls live here permanently, others keep their quarters locked and only come here at night to make money. During daytime, they have other jobs,” she said.

The pod where the sex work is done.

Ismat continued to look for the place she had been forcibly confined to during the first raid in May. She could not find it. The police had by then realised that Bobby and the madam had taken off well in time. So pervasive was the fear of the brothel madam and the pimps nobody from any of the brothels would recognise Ismat.

The missing child

“He (the pimp) along with a woman called Babita (the madam of the brothel), took me to a care home for children a short distance away,” Ismat told the police. “They told me all the women working in the brothel keep their kids in the care home.”

Virendra Singh told FP the child was found lodged at the Society for Participatory Integrated Development (SPID) Home on GB Road. As per their records, the child was lodged in presence of the mother.

Ismat’s tribulation wasn’t over. As the police team took her to the SPID care home for what they hope would be a fitting reunion, the authorities there refused to let Ismat even see her kid. It took Virendra Singh’s intervention, for Lalitha, the vice-president of SPID, to agree.

Even as this conversation was happening, a worker from the SPID home brought Ismat’s three-year-old into the office. The wait was over. The mother and child hugged each other tight as their tears flowed. Ismat wouldn’t let go.

Later, a court order ensured that the child and his mother were allowed to be taken back to West Bengal, where the Child Welfare Committee was to do due diligence and identify the home and parents before releasing the child to her mother.

When asked about his experience on this case, SI Iqbal told FP that the two raids made him wonder if the accused knew about the raids beforehand. “Both times, it was clear that they knew we are coming as there was hardly any anybody when we reached the brothel,” he said.

What of Nurul HAsan? Iqbal said Hasan had been arrested on the basis of Ismat’s statement. “He was in the process of trafficking another woman when we caught him. He is currently in judicial custody, while the search for the other two accused is on. Soon they will be arrested too.”

And that will be a fitting end to Ismat’s story.

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