While I was in Kolkata I spent an evening in Rambagan, one of the city’s 27 red-light districts, and home to something like 750 sex workers. I wasn’t allowed to photograph on the streets – it’s an incredibly edgy area – but spent time visiting some of the education centres that have been set up to protect the local children, who are at risk from punters and traffickers.
One of the issues I was interested in talking about with outreach workers was trafficking. I had heard that in some areas one of the main protection issues at the moment is fake marriages – and had already tried very hard to set up interviews with women who had been through this for a feature. I had been repeatedly turned down, and told the issue was too sensitive.

I didn’t get my survivors but did manage to find out a bit more about what is happening.
Veena Lakhumalani, director of local NGO Cini Asha, told me that in rural areas of West Bengal, men from outside the community are offering to marry pretty girls from poor families without a dowry or big marriage ceremony.
Then the girls then disappear, often trafficked into brothels and forced into prostitution. Even once liberated, the issue of family honour means a victim – now seen as impure – is unlikley to be taken back by her family.
Lakhumalani warns that traffickers are not only taking advantage of people’s naivity – but are also exploiting the absence of proper marriage registration. “One guy can get married 20 times and doesn’t need a piece of paper to prove anything,” she said. “This is something that needs to be changed.”