Terror is the only emotion that registers on Champa's drawn face. Sitting on the stained floor of a dingy hut in the Chakalisher village of Punjab, this 14-year-old with matted, grimy hair and dirty nails sobs uncontrollably. "He will hurt me," she blurts out in Bengali. Across the floor, under heaps of smelly clothes hanging on a clothesline, two other girls sit huddled together. One is fidgeting with a torn picture of a goddess; the other keeps readjusting her dupatta. In the dim light of a bulb hanging from a loose electric wire, all three look like mirror images of one another. A Murshidabad truck driver paid their parents Rs 3,000 each and brought them to Punjab. He raped Champa on the way. In the courtyard, an old lady, with parchment skin and bent back, sits on her charpoy. "Bachalo unko (save them)," she says feebly before a burly, bearded man storms in and bellows, "Bebe (mother) you keep out of this." He turns to us. "Get out, who are you?" Outside the mud walls, we bump into five men and a woman. "They have come to "see" the girls, whispers a local. The bargaining is about to start.

MEENU, sold at 13

She was brought from South 24 Parganas to a Delhi brothel

Meenu, now 18, was brought to Delhi's infamous G.B. Road when she was 13. She realised this was the "job" the friend who took her there had promised. But she stayed on. "I prefer being a sex worker to eating once in four days," she says. Her seven siblings, paralytic father and unemployed mother could have regular meals only after she started sending them money. She was once picked up in a police raid and, in the name of rehabilitation, dumped in Kolkata. She found her way back to Delhi where she says she can earn more. The mouths Meenu feeds have increased. She has a three-year-old child and is pregnant again.

What was once a scattered trade run by petty pimps is now an organised crime with international gangs involved, some with underworld links. Earlier, touts used PCOs to make calls and chloroform-laced handkerchiefs to make the girls unconscious. Now they carry mobile phones, video cameras and mood-altering depressant drugs. Dayawati, 15, rescued in Mewat in Haryana was found carrying a strip of tranquilisers which she said were pills for energy given to her by her "chacha". The city traffickers are not paan-chewing men with bulging bellies or garish women wearing red lipstick. Cultured, English-speaking voices picked up phones, when numbers given by rescued girls were called by India Today. One woman said she ran an agency that supplied "crowds" for film shootings. In Kolkata, girls below 10 years are "groomed" for the sex trade by making them work in brothel bars. "They bars as part of the "grooming" for the sex trade. "They are taught to be coquettish with the customers," informs Prabir Basu of NGO span. Traffickers also trade in mentally challenged and blind girls by first befriending them.

It is a huge, unscrupulous bazaar with its own rules and ratings. Girls between nine and 15 years of age fetch the highest price depending upon their physical attributes. As traffickers change hands, the price of girls bought for Rs 2,000-4,000 from their native villages appreciates to Rs 50,000 in the beer bars of Mumbai where pimps invest in attractive girls. So on an average a healthy, good-looking girl will fetch a profit of over Rs 30,000. Some pimps work on regular, monthly commissions with an additional fee per girl sold.

"Undoubtedly, the organised nexus has strengthened and spread over the years," agrees Inspector-General of Police P.M. Nair, nodal officer of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) in Delhi for its project, the Action Research on Trafficking in Women and Children. This soon-to-be-released research is the first of its type commissioned by NHRC. Sponsored by UNIFEM (United Nations Development Fund for Women), the research is being done at Delhi's Institute of Social Sciences with inputs from key agencies in 11 states.

JAMILA, sold at 13

She was sold as a "wife" in Murshidabad by her mother for Rs 3,000 to a peasant

Last week, NGO Shakti Vahini found that 13-year-old Jamila was kept in the house of Hasan in the Mewat region of Haryana. She had been sold by her mother from a village in West Bengal. In a raid conducted by the Nuh police, led by SDM Nitin Yadav, Jamila was rescued in the presence of India Today. The SDM ordered that she be kept under the protection of the village sarpanch in gross violation of the Juvenile Justice Act that stipulates a minor be sent to a juvenile home. The NGO has approached NHRC for settling Jamila's case.

The problem needs to be seriously studied because the changing demands have altered the supply dynamics of this age-old trade. Last week, 13-year-old Jamila was rescued from the house of Hasan, a trafficker in the notorious Nuh village in Haryana's Mewat region. Hasan, 35, had brought Jamila from a village in West Bengal after paying Rs 3,000 to her mother. There is a huge spurt in the demand for minor girls like her. A comparison of various estimates reveals that trafficking in minor girls from and within India has increased by about 45 per cent in the last decade. Unwanted by poor parents, they come cheap. Illiterate, deprived of care and too innocent to resist force of any kind, they are ideal subjects to be abducted or ensnared. Like the battered and pregnant 15-year-old Nagi of Hori village in Jharkhand, who was sold for Rs 2,000 in Haryana. Then there's the haggard, Mita Gurung of Beheliya, Nepal, whose buyers in Saudi Arabia poked fingers in her eyes while she slaved as a domestic help for 15 hours a day. Or shockingly, eight-year-old Anu with sunburnt hair and jagged hands who was rescued from a circus-the jingle Paisa pheko tamasha dekho forever haunts her. And the ghost-like Samira, 14, of Hooghly in West Bengal, who was duped and drugged only to wake up in Mumbai's Kamatipura. "Touts force girls into drug addiction so that they are manipulated into following orders," says Tapati Bhowmick of Kolkata NGO Sanlaap.

Also, the myths that virgins can cure venereal diseases or that pre-pubescent girls cannot carry the HIV virus have increased their saleability in sex markets multifold. On the contrary, new studies reveal that the disease has passed on from infected men to these girls. Many are HIV positive, some have full-blown aids. The practice of young girls being married off to ageing Arab sheikhs continues in Hyderabad, but with a dangerous twist. "The traffickers pose as Arabs. The parents are led to believe that their daughters are in the Middle East, when actually they are pushed into the flesh trade," says Dr Sunitha Krishnan of Prajwala, a Hyderabad-based anti-trafficking organisation.

SUSHEELA, sold at 14

"I'm scared. I want to die."

Susheela, 14, spoke to India Today at Gorakhpur police station. She was lured by her "boyfriend" from Deoria, Uttar Pradesh, with the promise of marriage. An NGO found her during a random inspection of local buses. Q. Who is the person who brought you to Gorakhpur? A. I don't know his name. I have known him for the past three years. I only know that he is a butcher and I love him. He said he would take me to his uncle's house and then marry me. Q. Salim Khan (the man she came with) has told the police that you chased him and that you had other men as customers. He says he has never touched you and has known you only for the past 24 hours. A. He is lying. He has been sleeping with me for two years since I was 12. He has also been sending other men to me, including a dark, tall, fat man who beat me up if I refused. Since we left our village yesterday, he has raped me more than 10 times in his friend's hut. (She starts moaning with pain and crying). Q. Why don't you go back to your parents? A. My parents don't want me. And now that I have become "dirty" they will never take me back. I am scared. I want to die.

Murshidabad district of West Bengal which once supplied minor boys for camel jockeying to the Middle East, is now the biggest supplier of minor girls for clandestine prostitution rackets involving Haj tourists. The Bedia community of Uttar Pradesh, which traditionally sells daughters to brothels, now gives them away to rich clients abroad. Jamtala Daspara village in South 24 Parganas, West Bengal, has no more teenaged girls. Sitala began this trend by being the first girl to become a sex worker who sent her earnings back to poor villagers. From an outcast, she became a village matriarch when in 1963, she funded the only school there-a decrepit, one-storey building with four classrooms, now called the Sitala Devi Primary School. Today, almost every family in Jamtala sells its girl children.

This is modern India where, as India Today's investigations showed, hundreds of similar tragedies are being enacted every day. Of minor girls being abducted, lured, beaten black and blue, raped and abused, sold and resold till they give in to slavery. Trafficking is just a constitutional description for the slave trade in girls, now a billion-dollar industry in south Asia. The UN and the NHRC term it as the fastest growing criminal enterprise in the world. India has emerged as a big transit point on the world map of human trafficking. About 89 per cent of the total trafficked girls are sold within the country. Researchers warn that instead of going by the hype that numbers create, it is important to look at the changing patterns in female trafficking.

The gangs have an extensive network and the trade works in three tiers. Salim Khan, 19, of Deoria in eastern Uttar Pradesh, is a link in one such chain. With a vicious expression he says he seduces young girls, promising them money and marriage. He was arrested with 14-year-old Susheela, who had eloped with him. As the tales of the girls progress, more characters enter the script. The first rapist is usually the first procurer and the first sale takes place just outside the village. "The decentralisation of prostitution along highway joints and in smaller districts has boosted the sale of the girls," says Priti Patkar of Mumbai-based NGO Prerana.

RESCUED: Hapless minors freed in a raid on a circus in Muzaffarnagar

Some procurers pretend to be well-wishers of girls who fall hook, line and sinker for the promise of marriage and a comfortable life in the city. A vigilance checkpost at the Sonauli border between India and Nepal found that 80 per cent of girls who were intercepted claimed to be married to their traffickers. "The porous border with numerous unmanned entry points makes it easy for the girls to pass through unchecked," says Jata Shankar, executive director of Seva Beyond Border, a Gorakhpur-based NGO active along the Indo-Nepal border.

The sale of girls into the sex trade is the most documented aspect of trafficking yet it cannot be used as a synonym for prostitution. It involves other forms of coerced sale: domestic work, agricultural and industrial labour, circus activities, organ trade, bogus marriages, begging and adoption rackets. So little is the value placed on daughters and so compelling the pangs of starvation that almost anybody can walk into many villages, pick out a poor family and buy a girl for a few thousand rupees. As one villager said, "We sold the little jewellery that we had, then the farm and the bullock. Now the only saleable thing left with us are our daughters." Even in the face of development, bonded labour still thrives in India. In Dalersinghwala village of Punjab many poor Dalit families have sold their daughters as labourers to zamindars.

KULDIP KAUR, sold at 14

She was sold for Rs 6,000 as a bonded labourer

The Dalersinghwala village in Punjab has many poor Dalit families who have sold their children as labourers to the local zamindars. The money is given to the parents, but a hefty interest that accumulates over the years ensures that these girls are not taken back by parents. They work in the fields from dawn to dusk.

In urban India, a bigger story is being scripted. Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata serve as business hubs. Mumbai, the import-export point, is the undisputed capital of this crime. Rescued girls interviewed in Ranchi in Jharkhand, Nepal and Murshidabad repeatedly mentioned Mumbai. Tourist spots like Baina in Goa are the emerging markets. Punjab and Haryana feature on trafficking maps as states where girls are sold for domestic and agricultural labour or as "wives". Jharkhand activist Dayamani Barla, who rescued 21 girls by posing as an agent, reveals that 20,000 tribal girls are listed with unregistered agencies as potential domestic helps in Delhi. "The police and local politicians have a nexus with these gangs," she says.

Barla's accusation is not unjustified. The keepers of law are ignorant and apathetic, if not a party to the crime. Nitin Yadav, the sub-divisional magistrate who helped rescue Jamila was not even aware of the Juvenile Justice Act and the fact that a minor cannot be produced before a judicial magistrate or detained in a police station. As Circle Officer A.S. Rai posted in Gorakhpur argues, "Seldom do criminal activities thrive on such a large, organised level unless they are done hand in glove with the police." Not to mention that some policemen also violate human rights.

Despite the growth in this trade, nobody seems to be doing anything about it. Andhra Pradesh, the second largest supplier of girls after West Bengal, is the only state in India with an anti-trafficking policy and is working on judicial provisions. The Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA), amended in 1986, is a sound legal provision, but it only takes into cognisance victims of sexual exploitation, not other forms of trafficking as mentioned in the UN protocol. In 1997, the Supreme Court ordered a national plan of action for an indepth study and a committee to look into prostitution. "But nothing has been done," says Rishi Kant Srivastava of Faridabad-based Shakti Vahini. "Small brothels are raided and shut down only to become bigger call girl rings." As Nair points out, "About 80 per cent of the convictions under ITPA are of victims of sexual exploitation. Instead of arresting victims of sexual exploitation, traffickers should be punished."

NHRC member Justice Sujata Manohar feels the Government has to snap out of its stereotypical responses and train the police and policymakers to be more sensitive. Her argument is pertinent because though rescues take place, rehabilitation is another ballgame. There is a dearth of transit and rehabilitation homes for minors. After rescue, policemen don't know where to keep the girls. They are taken to Nari Niketans, some of which are worse than prisons. Here, in the name of counselling, girls are berated. Until counselling moves beyond hammering, welfare beyond tailoring classes, and reintegration beyond retrafficking, effective rehabilitation will be a dream.

Which is why initiatives like that of Prajwala, which collaborates with companies like Amul Pizza Corner to start micro enterprises for the rescued girls, make sense. The villagers of Harra near Ranchi and former devadasis of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, have formed anti-trafficking lobbies. NHRC's Action Research will be a permanent programme, backed by the Ministry of Human Resources Development.

Unless everyone, including the police, policymakers, judiciary, activists and people involved in every way with human trafficking join hands, girls will continue to be sold in the India of the 21st century. And more children like the one Meenu is carrying will be born as "dhande ke bachche" or the "children of the trade", as she calls them.

with Sanjay Kumar Jha in Ranchi and Labonita Ghosh in Murshidabad

All names have been changed to protect identities.