India
Although not all policemen were abusive by sex workers’ own admission, and some were even their friends, most policemen engaged in some form of verbal, physical, or sexual harassment. They sometimes registered false cases against sex workers and trafficked in women.154 A national meeting of sex workers and parliamentarians held in 2011 identified recent incidents of police harassment including arrest on the grounds of alleged drug offences.155 For example, a transgender sex worker from Karnataka Sex Workers Union (KSWU) described police regularly engaging in extortion by filing false cases against sex workers for possession of illicit drugs, demanding sexual favours and committing assaults. It was reported: An incident took place recently in Channapatna, a small town near the highway, where the police entered the house of a sex worker, forcibly removed her, and later had her pictures telecast on TV and in print. When the sex workers union went to inquire into the incident, the police got goondas156 and had them beaten. In another incident in Anantpur district in Andhra Pradesh, the police, with the help of anti-trafficking groups, raided brothels and rounded up around 300 sex workers. The women were brought out onto the street, in full public view, and were dealt with inhumanely. An earlier study of hijra sex workers commissioned by People’s Union for Civil LibertiesKarnataka documents cases of violence, police entrapment and extortion: Sexual violence is a constant, pervasive theme...Along with subjection to physical violence such as beatings and threats of disfigurement with acid bulbs, the sexuality of the hijra also becomes a target of prurient curiosity, at the very least and brutal violence as its most extreme manifestation. As the narratives indicate, the police constantly degrade hijras by asking them sexual questions, feeling up their breasts, stripping them, and in some cases raping them...such actions constitute a violation of the integrity and privacy of the very sexual being of the person. The police attitude seems to be that since kothis157 and hijras engage in sex work, they are not entitled to any rights.158 KSWU has reported that in 2008, police from Andhra Pradesh joined with Delhi police to conduct raids on Delhi brothels. Seventy-five women were detained for three days and ordered to be returned to Andhra Pradesh. Twenty four were classified as traffickers and 51 as ‘victims’. According to KSWU, most of the so-called victims were adult women working voluntarily in sex work. The women were sent to state and NGO-run shelters. Many women complained of abuses in the shelters. Sex worker advocates who interviewed the women who had been ‘rescued’ confirmed that the working conditions in the brothels had been very poor. However, only two women were found to have been coerced into sex work. According to KSWU, the police operation did not improve conditions in the brothels or rehabilitate the self-identified victims.159
154 Kotiswaran P. (2011), op cit., p122. 155 National Network of Sex Workers and Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit (2011), Sex Workers Meet Law Makers: Report of a dialogue held at the Constitution Club, New Delhi, 1st March 2011, Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit. 156 Local thugs. 157 Kothi is a term used in India to refer to a man who assumes feminine traits. A kothi may or may not engage in sex work. 158 PUCL-K (2003), Human Rights Violations against the Transgender Community: A study of kothi and hijra sex workers in Bangalore, India Peoples’ Union for Civil Liberties, Karnataka (PUCL-K). 159 KSWU (2009), Trade union protections for sex workers, Bangalore: KSWU, p.6.
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