Gone Girls: The Trafficked Children Of Yadadri

Temple town exposed as a hub of child prostitution.

- Marri Ramu B. Pradeep

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.