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ushes, derelict buildings, fields and open construction sites. These places are
dangerous, dirty, and unsafe.
Women say they are beaten up and raped in the fields by clients or petty criminals
and goondas (hooligans) who demand free services. Local farmers also take
advantage of them. The police do not register any complaints of assault.
Sometimes, bodies of women are found on the fields, half eaten by animals. The
police take no cognisance of these cases, the women say.
(Menon, 1999)
Women working on the gali also become victims of physical assault by truck drivers,
passers-by, police and other criminal groups.
In contrast to the protection afforded sex workers in brothels, (a result of payoffs to
officials) these roadside sex workers are terribly exposed and are the most vulnerable in
the lal batti.
Fig. 5:2 Samarajyam Dandam, 9 years old, with
sister Krupajoyti age 5 next to their HIV AIDS
infected mother. Naccharamma aged 25, is in
the advanced stages of HIV and TB and has
been bedridden for the past 3 months . The
family lives in a shanty shack on the
embankment of the Krishna River in the city of
Vijaywada. Retrieved September 10, 2007 from
http://www.netphotograph.com/article.php?id
=10
Shanti (name changed) is a 40–year–old woman living with HIV/AIDS from the Ist
lane of Kamathipura in Mumbai’s red-light district. She has no family. She has no
home. She begs on the street. She was thrown out of the brothel when she turned
positive and was getting old. She goes for a bath to the Bombay Central State
Transport Bus Depot. She goes for breakfast for the Gaurabai hospital, for lunch to
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