Book contents
- Immoral Traffic
- Cambridge Studies in Law and Society
- Additional material
- Immoral Traffic
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India
- 2 A Tale of Two Rescues
- 3 “These Girls Never Give Statements”
- 4 Proving Prostitution
- 5 “She Is Not Revealing Anything”
- 6 From “House of Horrors” to “Sensitive” Governance
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Law and Society
4 - Proving Prostitution
Evidence and Respectability in a Mumbai Court
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 06 March 2025
- Immoral Traffic
- Cambridge Studies in Law and Society
- Additional material
- Immoral Traffic
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1 Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India
- 2 A Tale of Two Rescues
- 3 “These Girls Never Give Statements”
- 4 Proving Prostitution
- 5 “She Is Not Revealing Anything”
- 6 From “House of Horrors” to “Sensitive” Governance
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in Law and Society
Summary
The US-driven and NGO-mediated prosecutorial approach to address trafficking prioritizes efforts to convict the accused and foregrounds victim-witness testimony as the central piece of evidence to do so. Though training rescued women to testify against alleged traffickers is thus a key component of donor-driven NGOs’ efforts, the author’s ethnographic research revealed that this is a rare occurrence. This chapter explores the multiple and complex reasons why most rescued women don’t testify, by situating them in the broader Indian sociolegal context. In juxtaposition, it tracks the case of a trafficked woman, Sunaina Das, who testified for the prosecution in a New Delhi trial court, to also explore the constellation of factors that lead some women to testify and the challenges they face. It follows Sunaina’s encounters with the Indian criminal justice system and the support she received from both NGOs and Indian legal actors. Finally, it explores how an NGO-led training session for Indian judges impacted her case. Through these contributions, this chapter challenges prevalent assumptions in global anti-trafficking campaigns about the victimhood of Global South sex workers, about criminal justice necessarily benefiting trafficked sex workers, and about the Indian criminal justice system necessarily lacking the ability to address sex trafficking.
Keywords
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- Information
- Immoral TrafficAn Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India, pp. 94 - 127Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2025