Girls were branded, beaten by traffickers

Hyderabad: The horrifying story of eleven minor girls ranging from age eight to ten rescued from a brothel has now revealed yet another inhuman facet of the traffickers. The children who were picked up from railway stations mainly and brought to the brothel had to go through a series of ‘breaking in’ methods practised by the kidnappers.

One of these was beating the children regularly to make them agree to the flesh trade. The second was to burn their fingertips and brand them. Care was taken not to mark their bodies as this would lessen their market value. 

The brothel and its misdoings first came to light when neighbours heard the screams of the little girls. It was they who alerted the police first, which was when the rescue operation was conducted jointly by the Childline officials and the Yadagirigutta police.

When the teams raided the houses, the girls were found in school uniforms. 

Whether this was to indulge an old man’s perverted fantasy or whether the children were being sent to school as claimed by the madam of the brothel, is still to be ascertained.

“In order to avoid suspicion by the locals, the traffickers admitted the children at various schools by changing their names and claiming to be their parents. They wanted the girls to forget their past and be with them. A few girls also told the teams that they had another mother at home, but called the woman caretaker as their mother,” said a senior police official from Rachakonda, who supervised the rescue operation.

The official shared, “A girl child shared that she was given a chocolate by the traffickers while at a railway station and was brought to the brothel, and was told that this would be her new home.”

The Yadagirigutta police on Tuesday arrested eight traffickers including six women, for kidnapping 11 children amongst whom ten girls were aged below eight years. 

However, the police are still clueless about another accused Dr Swamy, who reportedly was giving hormone injections to the children so that they looked older than their age. 

“Fortunately, the rescued children were neither drugged nor abused. The number of women trafficked by these gangs cannot be ascertained, as from several decades their families are into organising prostitution. They even force their own daughters into the flesh trade,” said Rachakonda police commissioner Mr Mahesh Bhagwat.

The Commissioner said, “The innocent children were tortured by the traffickers. They were branded on their fingertips and had burn injuries on their hands. Their screams had alerted the locals to share information with the Childline officials.” 

The official said, “There is much to be done during a post-rescue operation. All the police stations in the state and neighbouring states will be intimated about the rescued girls, to find out if any missing cases were registered. DNA tests also need to be performed to reunite the kids.”