The horrifying story of a trafficked girl and the brave people who saved her

Dressed in a simple cotton salwar kameez, in the first look she looks simple and uncomplaining. There's nothing flashy about her, but a closer look shows there are a thousand miseries hidden behind Chandrakala's ever-smiling face.

At a young age of 27, she is still battling demons from her dark times. She grew up in Mysore. Her parents died when she was a child. Both she and her sister were raised by her relatives and neighbours. Growing up, all she wanted was to work, get married and have a family of her own. But fate had separate plans for this girl.

An incident onboard Mysore-bound train scarred her for life. She boarded the train to return home after her failed job hunt in Bangalore, but woke up next morning in a strange room, in a strange city, surrounded by people chattering in languages she couldn’t understand, probably Hindi and Marathi.

She wasn't aware that she had been trafficked! The strange area she had found herself in was Kamathipura - one of the largest red light districts in India. Chandrakala was first drugged in the Mysore-bound train by a stranger, hauled off to a Mumbai brothel and tortured until she agreed to become a prostitute. Her trafficker was banking on Chandrakala being disoriented and terrified – he knew it would make it tougher for her to escape.

She was trafficked at 20, and for the next five years, men bought and sold Chandrakala’s body on the streets of Kamathipura. At dusk, many like her stood – caked in makeup – on narrow lanes littered with refuse, beckoning hollow-eyed men to follow them into tiny dinghy rooms.

Today, she lives in an NGO - Threads Of Freedom United Home- in Bangalore with other trafficked women like her who were rescued. She would never have been rescued if one of her own customers from Karnataka hadn’t taken pity on her. Perhaps, the fact that they both had the same mother tongue, Kannada, did it. He alerted the police and they raided the brothel. The next few years that she was at government funded centres, she learned tailoring and mat making. But she had no job and little contact with the outside world. Still in her twenties, she began despairing of ever having a normal life. Her family didn't want her and she didn't know what she would do. Death seemed like the only way out till she became a responsibility of the Bangalore NGO.

Her conversation now is peppered with terms she’s recently learned like “self-reliance” and “job security”. Her plans for the future are bound up in these abstract concepts. But ask her how she feels, she puts it simply, “Free”, she says, “Like I’ve been let out of prison.”.

It has taken almost a decade, but she finally might have a decent job. A few months ago, she was inducted into Milaap's 'Threads of Freedom programme'. Milaap is the biggest and therefore, one of the most effective crowd-funding and fund-raising websites in India, from where several heartening stories such as Chandrakala’s have emerged. Her training and reintegration costs around Rs 1,20,000.

Since it will take few months until she is finally on payroll of one of TOFU’s partner garment factories, living expenses for coming few months in addition to the training might cost her up to Rs 1,50,000. Though she will be self-sufficient in 6 months to afford this herself, the beginning is a trouble for her as she struggles for support today.

In time, she also wishes to move out of the NGO and start a life of own. A small house. A kitchen to cook her favourite meal for herself and living the feeling of independence..