A 16-year-old sex worker’s ordeal, who unknowingly underwent a tubectomy operation after her ‘client’ sedated her, revealed a child prostitution racket in Ludhiana. Shubha (name changed), from West Bengal, said she had been living with Jagdish Singh Janda, a lawyer, for the past one month and had been sexually exploited by him.
Authorities of the Lord Mahavira Civil Hospital in Ludhiana had allegedly connived with Janda over performing the permanent contraception procedure on Shubha. The health card issued by the hospital on January 5 had registered Shubha as a 27-year-old married woman. Hospital authorities were reluctant to show Shubha’s original records.
Shubha was later taken to Rupinder Kaur, the programme officer of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), who took her to an orphanage. After being kept at the orphanage for two days, she was shifted to a home for girls in Jalandhar.
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A commercial sex worker in Surat met with her worst nightmare when she was gang-raped by 13 people at Bamroli in Pandesara on Tuesday night. The 23-year-old victim lodged a complaint with Pandesara police who have initiated hunt for the culprits on Wednesday.
Sapna (name changed), a resident of Variyaavi Bazaar near Chowk bazaar was first taken by two youths to a flat in Bamroli on Tuesday evening. After the duo had their session, they then forced Sapna to have relationship with 11 other friends of theirs. A case has been registered and police is investigating into the matter.
After a night-long horror, battered and humiliated Sapna was finally dropped off near Saptshrungi temple at Bhatar at 5 am by the two clients. Writhing in pain, the traumatised woman managed to reach her house and recount her tale of horror to her room-mates.
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To ensure an appropriate response in framing the state women’s policy, which aims to recognise the concerns of marginalised communities like transgender women and sex workers, the expert committee will have representation of these communities as well, said Minister for Women and Child Varsha Gaikwad while addressing a state-level consultation in Mumbai on Designing a Social Inclusion Plan for Marginal and Vulnerable Communities.
The consultation, which was organised by the State Women and Child Development Department, State Women’s Commission in collaboration with the National Mission for Empowerment of Women (NMEW), Ministry of Women and Child and the Centre for Advocacy and Research (CFAR), brought together senior officials from all social sector departments, NGOs, community-based organisations and experts.
Speaking about the process adopted by the government to frame the women’s policy, the minister said a committee of MLAs, MPs and NGOs has been formed which will be expanded to include three representatives from transgender women and sex worker communities to ensure that their concerns get reflected in the policy document. She added that the Department of Women and Child Development is also willing to address concerns of transgenders and to ensure their integration into all social development programmes and schemes.
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A lawyer has approached the Bombay high court (HC) contending that it is illegal to arrest the customer of a sex worker. The case in question was that of the arrest and subsequent detention of 124 male customers, who were apprehended after a prostitution racket was raided at Grant Road on October 4.
Representing some of the customers, advocate Prabhanjan Dave pointed out that there is no provision under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act (PITA), 1956 under which a customer can be made an accused. Prima facie, the arrest and subsequent detention of the customers was in violation of the law.
At about 8.30pm on October 4, a team of police had raided the Simplex building at Grant Road. During the raid, the police rescued 340 women and arrested 124 male customers and 56 female brothel keepers.
Dave had subsequently filed a public interest litigation (PIL) before the HC. On Friday’s hearing, in addition to questioning the legality of the arrests, Dave was seeking appropriate compensation for the illegal arrest and detention of the customers.
According to Dave, although all 124 customers were apprehended at about 8.45pm on October 4, they were produced in a metropolitan court nearly 45 hours after later, violating the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code. The law requires police to produce people before a magistrate within 24 hours of their arrest.