Temple town exposed as a hub of child prostitution.

When child care workers found her, the nine-year-old girl lay at the doorsteps of a house in BC Colony of Yadagirigutta, weeping, bruises on her hands. A frantic call to 1098, the child helpline, in end-July sent a team of officials from the Women and Child welfare Department and the police rushing to this suburb, 50 km from Hyderabad.

The little girl reluctantly told the officials that her mother had beaten her up for indiscipline. The officials found this hard to believe, and closely questioned the woman, making her furious and abusive.

Racket unravelled

But the ‘mother’ soon admitted that she had bought the child for ₹ 1 lakh. And that there were more like her. Her confession blew the lid off the scandal in Yadadri, the famous temple town earlier known as Yadagirigutta, of trafficked children forced into prostitution. Based on the confession of the woman, Kamsani Kalyani, whom the police describe as a pimp, more houses were raided and 14 other girls rescued. The caller to 1098 had said it was disturbing to hear the cries of the girls frequently at night. “Men, mostly strangers, came at night,” the caller said. Yes, that was true, Kalyani confessed.

She would make the child she had purchased watch customers have sex with her older victims. Kalyani did this to train the younger girls. If a girl resisted, she would end up battered and bruised. To make sure the girls began earning early, brothel operators even administered hormones to them.

During a raid at a nursing home a little distance from the colony, police said they seized 40 ampoules of oxytocin and arrested the doctor. They also nabbed 11 alleged traffickers in the town. Police said they found the operation of procuring girls, selling them to pimps and forcing them into prostitution had been going on in and around the temple town for long.

Most of the girls were rescued from houses in the same colony. The officers did not comment on how long child prostitution was going on. Residents, however, said 'everyone knows about this.'

“Genuine devotees go up the hill for darshan of Lord Narasimha Swamy, but others head for lodges, family rooms or private homes in scattered localities,” said a mess worker, referring to parts of Angadi Bazar, Ganeshnagar and Pathagutta.

Within hours of police rescuing the girls, occupants of 20 houses in the colony vanished, locking up their premises. Some apparently alerted others on WhatsApp.

In Vijayawada, police said more than 25 persons were thought to have escaped, taking some of the children from Yadadri with them, to Andhra Pradesh and other States. The Telangana police had formed special teams to rescue the missing children.

Following the raids, a few parents from Andhra Pradesh rushed to Yadadri in search of their children, clutching their photographs. The children went missing a few years ago and cases were filed with police.

“Traffickers have a wide network in different places in Telangana, Maharashtra, Karnataka, West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar and other States”, an investigation officer in Vijayawada said.

Tracing the families of the girls is proving to be a tough task for Telangana police. They say that Kalyani's claim that she bought the nine-year-old from one Kamsani Shankar of Yadagirigutta was investigated. It turned out that Shankar, on whom there were police records for involvement in many such cases, had died a few months ago. Another man, Raju, was in jail.

Lured at transit points

Nalgonda District Child Welfare Committee chairman K. Nimmaiah said organised gangs operate at railway stations, bus-stops and isolated places, looking for girls, offering chocolates or ice cream as a lure, including in Medak and Jagitiyal districts. “Of late, some poor parents with two or three daughters are selling off the younger ones,” he said.

A welfare officer associated with the raids in Yadagirigutta narrated that girls as young as five years old were bought. Traffickers admitted them in local Anganwadis (government shelters), and got them ration cards before they were10 years old to make them look like family members. They were then taken out of school. School certificates with fictitious names of parents were created, the welfare officer said. In one case, the name of a person who died of HIV complications was added as the parent of a girl, who was eventually rescued.

Once in the hands of pimps, lives of the girls turned horrendous. They were asked to note entry and exit of people in the houses and witness sexual acts.

Spending money was given to condition the girls, who were also administered hormonal injections by the time they were 10, by a quack attached to the brothel operators' network, the officer added.

Police records say that child prostitution in Yadagirigutta is not new. Nalgonda Child Welfare Committee members recollected that two years ago, seven girls were rescued by police after Bengaluru-based Justice and Care organisation took the initiative.

One girl tested positive for HIV. She and five others were taken away by their parents. The seventh girl, 12 years old now, was in a home for HIV children in Nalgonda. “This girl is not HIV positive but has to be accommodated in the home. That shows how prepared the government is to tackle the issue,” says Nalgonda CWC chairman K. Nimmaiah.

Police said they had booked 10 cases, arrested 19 persons, and rescued 16 girls so far after the recent bust.

The Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) Advisory Committee Chairman M. Ramachandra Reddy and CARA Member, and also Telangana in-charge, Gundlapally Sreenu, issued statements on the issue. They wrote on July 12 to the State Minister for Women and Child Development, Thummala Nageswara Rao, requesting constitution of a Child Welfare Committee in all districts and for constitution of a State Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

At least five of those arrested by Rachakonda police recently were accused of involvement in similar crimes earlier. About 450 children, including 295 girls were reported missing in January and February, 2018, in Andhra Pradesh, official data show.

(Inputs from Rajulapudi Srinivas in Vijayawada)