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5 - “She Is Not Revealing Anything”

Navigating Inquiries, Documents, and Kinship in a Mumbai Court

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 March 2025

Vibhuti Ramachandran
Affiliation:
University of California, Irvine
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Summary

Drawing upon ethnographic research and an analysis of judgments at the Special Anti-Prostitution Court in Mumbai, Chapter 4 shows how rescued women’s testimony is only one (albeit significant) factor shaping the outcomes of trials against the accused. The chapter illustrates how these trials are primarily shaped by the priorities of Indian law, its interpretation by the police and prosecutors, and the possibilities that requirements for “respectable” witnesses both in the ITPA and in Indian procedural law open up for NGOs. It reveals that anti-trafficking NGOs’ participation in the Special Court is neither entirely dependent on victim-witness testimony, nor on proving sex trafficking. Overall, the chapter shows how evidence and testimony at this Special Court is presented to prove prostitution rather than sex trafficking, and how NGOs, police, and other witnesses participate in what the author refers to as the choreography of these trials. Beyond victim-witness testimony, it examines how the testimony of other prosecution witnesses (police officers, NGO workers, and decoy customers), forms of material evidence (cash, packets of condoms and tissues), and medical reports shape ITPA cases and their outcomes at the Mumbai Special Court.

Type
Chapter
Information
Immoral Traffic
An Ethnography of Law, NGOs, and the Governance of Prostitution in India
, pp. 128 - 164
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2025

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