UP troupe rescue: ‘Money thrown at us, what we could grab was ours, rest went to maalik’

The 17-year-old’s mother, who works as a domestic help, remembers Dewan walking into their small hut and looking around. “She asked my daughter if she liked to dance. We said she did. Dhaneshwari told us she wanted to take her away for 15 days to dance in shows. She didn’t say Allahabad, only Raipur or Bhilai. I didn’t know her, and was uncomfortable, so I said no,” the mother says.

Dewan then wooed the girl, telling her how she would earn Rs 70,000 in 15 days, “an amount our family could not earn in a year”. “Eventually, my daughter said she wanted to go. My heart sank. But a part of me too was lured by the prospect of Rs 70,000. Dhaneshwari promised she would treat my daughter like her own,” the mother says.

What was supposed to be 15 days turned into a month, with no news of the 17-year-old. Eventually, they tracked down Dewan’s address in Balod, and accosted her. She gave them the number of Sonkar, saying she had taken their daughter to him.

Sonkar told them their daughter still had to work to “repay the money he had paid for her”. When the family insisted they wanted to talk to her, the girl was put on the phone. “She sounded frightened but told us she was in Allahabad, and would come back in May after completing her shows. She said she was fine,” her mother says.

In the first week of June, a 19-year-old arrived at the parents’ doorstep. She said she had managed to escape Sonkar’s clutches, and told them of the abuse their daughter was going through.

Since then, 32 girls from Chhattisgarh part of Sonkar’s band, going by the name Surendra Orchestra as well as Pawan Orchestra, have been rescued. Police say Sonkar had 50 girls in his band, one of many in UP which put up dance performances on occasions such as weddings and birthday parties, with abuse of performers rampant.

Sonkar kept his girls in an isolated farmhouse, just off the main road. The girls told The Indian Express that the farmhouse had a hall and six rooms but they slept on the roof.

They would be woken up at 6 am, and told to finish chores such as washing up and cleaning. Only the men were allowed to step out and buy provisions. After their first meal, “practice” for the show would be from 11 am to 5 pm, with little or no rest. “The music was largely Bhojpuri, and often Hindi. Not dancing was not an option,” says a 16-year-old.

Some of the girls who have been rescued. (Source: Express photo by Dipankar Ghose)

On most days, say the girls, men would arrive. The girls would be paraded, and three or four “selected”. By 7 pm, the men would take these girls to the venue for that night’s dance. The show would begin after midnight, in front of inebriated audiences. The girls would be dressed skimpily — they gesture showing a small strip of cloth around the chest, a narrow skirt around the waist.

It was here that the girls made the promised “money”. Says a 17-year-old, “Anything thrown by the audience that we could grab or the money stuffed in our clothes was ours. Anything that fell on the floor was the maalik’s.” However, often even these earnings were taken away, she adds. The girls could make Rs 3,000-Rs 4,000 per show; often though it was much less.

In return, the men could climb up on the makeshift stage and touch them “in bad places”. “Many a time, men take the girls away into the fields… Everyone knows what happens. We got used to it after a while,” says a 31-year-old, one of the oldest in Sonkar’s bands who is now back in Chhattisgarh.

Apart from the sexual abuse, the girls also suffered physical assaults, brought upon by a request to call home, or to leave the farmhouse, or to even rest. At least six girls The Indian Express spoke to had brown circular marks on their arms, necks, and above their chests. “They would burn us with cigarettes, otherwise beat us with belts,” says the 17-year-old who was the first to be rescued.

Rishi Kant of NGO Shakti Vahini, who helped the Chhattisgarh Police track the girls and Sonkar, says these “dance troupes” have become part of local culture. “In eastern UP and Bihar, these troupes exist everywhere, and this [case] is only the tip of the iceberg. All of them have girls trafficked from places such as West Bengal and Chhattisgarh.”

Kant fears that with elections approaching, these troupes would again be in high demand. “Small-level politicians often use these troupes to attract crowds,” he says.

Balod SP Arif Sheikh, who led the operation to rescue the girls, says that eight of them from his district had received counselling, with two expressing a desire to study, one to open a business, and five seeking vocational training. “We have asked the administration to allow those who want to study admission in the middle of the term. Those who want vocational training will be given this through NRLM [National Rural Livelihoods Mission]. The Chhattisgarh Mahila Kosh will provide a loan to the girl who wants to open a small business,” Sheikh says.

Durg IG Dipanshu Kabra says they plan to identify the conduits who target these girls. Police are also planning a social outreach programme to prevent girls from being seen as “commodities”.

At Balod, her mother by her side, the 17-year-old keeps lapsing into silence when talking about her time in Allahabad. But she is resolute when asked about her future. A quiet ferocity in her eyes, she says, “I will never go back, and will never let anyone go back either. I will study. And I will become a teacher.”