3 - “These Girls Never Give Statements”

Summary

Chapter 2 highlights how rescues are swift and chaotic events, fraught with confusion and uncertainty, tensions between NGOs and police, and a range of choices sex workers make, from actively pursuing their escape, to resisting rescues. The chapter, rooted in ethnographic observations and a comparison of two rescues, brings forth how they are shaped by questions, uncertainties, tensions, and choices that are rarely acknowledged in mainstream media and policy representations of rescues. It builds upon and departs from existing feminist critiques to foreground the tensions between NGOs and police, rooted in different gendered moral frameworks, interpretations of the law, resources, and priorities of intervention. It explores how NGOs and police constantly negotiate these tensions, and examines their impact on the construction, navigation, and contestation of victimhood. Comparing two very different NGO-led rescues in New Delhi and Meerut, it also brings forth how the experiences, choices, and approaches of women’s entry into the sex trade, and the outcomes they seek, vary greatly.