A year after she returned home from her captors, 16-year-old Meena (name changed) has not got over her one year-long nightmare. The days and the nights she would be taken from village to village, dragged in and out of buildings where faceless men raped her until they wanted her no more, and then sold her like cattle.

It’s not just the trauma, Meena can barely walk. Every passing autorickshaw makes her hysterical — it was an autorickshaw driver who had abducted her on her way home from school and raped her before selling her in December 2006.

But Meena is not alone. There are many more girls who are up for sale as sex slaves in several villages fringing Ahmedabad, Surendranagar, Mehsana and some areas of Rajkot. It is not a prostitution racket, but the girls are being passed on from one buyer to another for personal “use”.

Most girls, however, belong to Dalit or backward communities. While some are abducted others are brought from other states and sold to rich farmers who sell them again only to buy new arrivals.

Ask Kanchan and Krishna Waghela from Bhiwandi in Mumbai. The couple are still going around the villages hoping someone would give them back their daughter who was abducted from Mumbai and brought to Dharji village of Ahmedabad district in February, before she was sold to some unknown person. They had their daughter back for a few minutes last June, before she was snatched away in front of them.

... contd.