The new automobile, IT and realty hub of India is also fast emerging as the centre of a trade that no one talks about. Located next door to Mumbai, brought even closer by the expressway, home to young professionals from across the country, Pune is now one of the leading destinations for trafficked minor girls in the country.

More alarmingly, say activists, the Pune-Mumbai flesh belt has taken to “treating” these girls with a course of growth hormones, both estrogen and testosterone, to promote abnormal breast development and enlargement of genital organs. Not only does this boost business, it also helps them escape the law by passing off minor girls as “majors” during police raids.

The girls are sourced from far and wide — Andhra Pradesh to Nepal and Bangladesh. Barely in their teens, they are given the hormones the same way as chemicals are used to ripen fruits.

Several girls with the Rescue Foundation, a Mumbai-based NGO that has now under its wings over 100 minors seized from brothels in Mumbai and Pune, testify to this.

Among those that the NGO stumbled upon in a Pune brothel on January 3 but failed to rescue were two sisters originally from Bhutan, 15 and 17. The girls were later rescued from a brothel in Delhi’s G B Road.

“I was given tablets daily along with milk at two Pune brothels over 18 demeaning months. I was told it was for stamina. But what actually happened was that my body began to grow. My sister also underwent abnormal body growth. She started getting facial hair. Both of us now look much older than we are,” says the elder sister.

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