Forced Prostitution and Trafficking: What You Can Do

One of my clients recently had a case which I am explaining below and if you are stuck in such similar situation, here is what to do.

Note: Due to attorney-client privilege, I cannot disclose complete case details or identify the actual parties involved. However, I am sharing the essential facts and legal approach so that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you can understand the available solutions and legal remedies.

TL;DR: Forced prostitution and trafficking are public offences. You do not need the victim's consent, and you do not need to be a relative, to file a written complaint or an FIR. If the local police stall, the law gives you a route to the Superintendent of Police, then to the Magistrate, and finally to the High Court. A rescue in such a case is ordered and supervised by a Magistrate, not carried out privately.

The story reached the Chamber second-hand, which is how most of these begin. On a Rakhi visit to his mother's hometown, a town outside Jaipur, the client asked his cousins the usual question, what's new. The answer was about a young woman he had played with as a child, Ritika, now in her early twenties. She had been left behind with her grandfather, Kanhaiya Lal, when she was small, because her parents wanted a son and then had one. Nobody in that family thought any of this was strange.

What the cousins said next was worse. They alleged that Ritika had been sexually abused inside that household and was now being used to earn money, shifted to another town roughly 200 km away and living with a cable operator who had fathered a child with one of Kanhaiya Lal's daughters. The man had threatened to kill Ritika's brother if her father tried to bring her back. When her uncle did try, she refused to go, and said she would end her life if she was sent to her parents.

The account is one-sided. Nothing in it has been independently verified, and a good part of it is what cousins heard from other people. That matters legally, but it does not make the complaint worthless.

Earlier attempts went nowhere. The family would not cooperate, and the complaint was never framed as what it actually was. It was treated as a family quarrel. The client approached the Chamber of Advocate Sudhir Rao, and the matter was rebuilt around trafficking and sexual offences instead. Advocate Sudhir Rao's expertise in this category of case helped move a stalled complaint into a registered investigation and a court-supervised rescue, with the victim placed before a Magistrate and the main accused taken into custody.

Key Facts of the Case

• The young woman is an adult in her early twenties. Her exact age is not confirmed, and it decides whether child protection law applies alongside the general criminal law.
• She was left in the grandfather's household as a small child and has lived there since, with no education and no independent income.
• The allegations come from relatives who were repeating what they had heard. No first-hand witness account exists at this stage.
• The household had moved about 200 km away from the family's original town, which complicates which police station has jurisdiction.
• A man outside the family is alleged to control the household, take the earnings, and threaten to kill the victim's brother if anyone intervenes.
• The victim has refused to return to her parents and has threatened self-harm. That refusal does not legalise the abuse.
• The client is not a relative and has no guardianship role. His position is that of an informant.
• The offences involved are cognizable, and the matter ultimately became a police investigation plus a Magistrate-supervised rescue.

The Direct Legal Answer

Yes, there is a way to act, and it does not require you to take her into your home or confront her family yourself. What is described here is treated as an offence against the State, not a private dispute between two families. You do not need her permission to report it, and you do not need to be related to her.

Can I do

Can I do anything myself, without going to the police?

No, and this is where well-meaning people end up in trouble. An adult woman cannot be lifted out of a house by a relative, a neighbour or an old friend of the family. Physically removing her, holding her anywhere she does not want to be, or entering someone's home to "rescue" her can itself be an offence — wrongful restraint, wrongful confinement, criminal trespass — and your motive will not save you.

The lawful rescue in a trafficking case is run by the police, on the strength of a Magistrate's order, in the presence of independent witnesses, after which the woman is produced before a Magistrate. That is the machinery. Anything outside it puts her at risk and puts you in the dock.

What are the offences involved in forced prostitution and trafficking?

Once the facts are read as trafficking rather than a family quarrel, several provisions open up at once. Which of them apply depends on her age and on what exactly was done to her.

• Trafficking in persons — Section 143 of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, 2023 (earlier Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code). Recruitment, transport, harbouring, transfer or receipt of a person for the purpose of exploitation. Punishment starts at seven years and goes up with aggravating factors.
• Exploitation of a trafficked person — the provision carried over from Section 370A IPC, which covers forced prostitution and similar exploitation after the trafficking itself.
• Sexual offences under the BNS — Section 64 (rape), Section 74 (assault or criminal force to a woman with intent to outrage her modesty), Section 75 (sexual harassment) — depending on who did what.
• Criminal intimidation — the threat to kill her brother, if it can be proved and traced to a specific person.
• The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956 — separately covers keeping premises for prostitution, living on the earnings of prostitution, procuring, and detaining a person for prostitution. Search powers here are broader than in an ordinary case.
• The POCSO Act, 2012 — if she is under eighteen. Age is the single most decisive fact, and it is still unverified in this matter.

Consent is not a defence

A woman's consent, however freely it appears to be given, does not convert trafficking into something lawful. Consent obtained through threat, coercion, deception or a position of power is not consent at all. Where she is a minor, consent is irrelevant by law.

The honest limit is this: if she is an adult, is living with a partner of her own free will, no force or fraud is involved, and nobody is taking her earnings, then the trafficking case may not survive. That is a real possibility in this file, and it is a question of fact that only an investigation can settle. It is also the reason the complaint should describe conduct, not conclusions.

Who can file a complaint in a forced prostitution or trafficking case?

Anyone. Under Section 173 of the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita, 2023 (earlier Section 154 CrPC), information about a cognizable offence may be given by any person — not only the victim, not only a relative, not only a guardian. A neighbour, an employer, a colleague, a stranger who saw something, can walk into a police station and give a written complaint.

Two practical points follow from that.

• Because these offences are cognizable, the police do not need anyone's permission to start investigating. Once the information discloses a cognizable offence, registration is mandatory — that is the holding in Lalita Kumari v. Government of U.P., and it is the provision the officer at the counter knows.
• If the offence was committed in another district or state, the nearest police station can register a Zero FIR and transfer it. Jurisdiction is a problem for the police to sort out, not a reason for you to be turned away.

What is the step-by-step procedure if the police will not act?

The law leaves you three doors, and they must be knocked on in order. Skipping one weakens the next.

1. Written complaint to the Station House Officer of the police station with jurisdiction, or the one nearest to the victim. Keep a receipt, or the station diary number, or at least a photograph of the complaint with the date visible. If the officer refuses to take it, send it by registered post and keep the receipt.
2. Complaint to the Superintendent of Police under Section 173(4) BNSS, if the SHO does not register the FIR. In writing, with the earlier complaint attached. The SP can investigate personally or direct a subordinate officer to do so.
3. Application to the Magistrate under Section 175(3) BNSS (earlier Section 156(3) CrPC), asking the court to direct an investigation. This is the remedy most people never reach, and it is often the one that moves a stalled file.
4. Writ petition before the High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution, if even that fails, asking for a direction to register and investigate.

On the rescue side, once a case is registered, the police move for an order from a Magistrate. Under Section 16 of the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, a Magistrate who is satisfied that a person is being kept for prostitution can order a search and a rescue, and the person rescued must then be produced before that Magistrate. The operation is run by the Special Police Officer or the district anti-human trafficking unit, with independent witnesses present and, under the BNSS, the search and seizure recorded on video. The client stayed out of it. That is the whole point of the machinery. A rescue is not a reunion. Nobody hands her back to her parents against her stated wish, and the court does not treat the family's preference as decisive. If she is an adult, and the investigation finds no force, no fraud, no threat, and nobody taking her earnings, the case can quietly fall away. If she is a child, or if the coercion is proved, the Magistrate decides where she stays in the meantime — a protective home or a shelter, not a private house and not the grandfather's.

What happens after the rescue, step by step

1. She is produced before a Magistrate without unnecessary delay, usually the same day or the next.
2. Her statement is recorded, and where the BNSS allows it, recorded before a Magistrate so that it carries weight later.
3. A medical examination is arranged with her consent, and the report goes to the investigating officer.
4. Interim custody or shelter is decided by the Magistrate. Not by the police, and not by the family.
5. The accused is arrested if the material supports it, and produced before a Magistrate for remand.
6. The investigation continues — call detail records, bank and payment-app records where earnings were taken, statements from neighbours, and the history of the earlier complaint.

Notice the client's role in that list. Nothing. He is a complainant, and if it goes to trial, a witness.

What evidence should you gather for a forced prostitution and trafficking complaint?

You are not the investigator. Your job is to hand over what a police officer can act on, in a form that cannot be dismissed as gossip.

• Write down what you know in date order, and separate what you saw from what you were told, and from whom.
• Names, addresses and phone numbers of everyone mentioned — including the relatives who will not support you.
• Anything you already have: photographs, screenshots, call recordings. If it is on a phone, keep the original device and the original file. A forwarded copy is worth far less. Electronic records have their own rules of proof under the Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam, 2023.
• Any earlier complaint, its date, the police station, and what happened to it — even if the answer is nothing.
• Her approximate age, and the basis for that estimate. This single fact decides whether POCSO applies alongside everything else.

Be specific about conduct, not conclusions. "She is being trafficked" is an opinion and an officer can wave it away. "She lives at this address, this man collects the earnings, and on this date he told a named person he would kill her brother if the family went there" is information.

What you must not do

• Do not go to the house yourself, and do not send anyone to bring her out. Wrongful restraint, wrongful confinement and criminal trespass are offences, and a good motive is not a defence.
• Do not pay anyone to "manage" the police station, and do not pay the man to let her go.
• Do not post names, photographs or allegations on social media while an investigation is running. It can wreck the prosecution and land you in a defamation or privacy complaint.
• Do not confront the household to test whether the story is true. The one person who pays for that is her.

If someone is in immediate danger, call 112. The women's helpline is 181 and the childline is 1098. Both move faster than a registered post letter.

Will the police act, and how long does it take?

An FIR on a written complaint disclosing a cognizable offence is supposed to be registered the same day. Realistically, a trafficking complaint built entirely on hearsay can sit for weeks, because the family-quarrel framing is easier for the officer at the counter. That delay is what the SP route and then the Magistrate route exist for. Each step leaves a dated paper trail, and the next authority is harder to put off once the earlier one is on record.

On cost: filing an FIR is free. What varies is the legal work — a drafted complaint is one thing, a contested application before a Magistrate or a writ petition before the High Court is another. Ask for the scope before you ask for a figure. And be wary of anyone quoting a price to "get her out". That is not a service anyone can lawfully sell.

What if the woman herself says nothing happened?

Then it becomes harder, and sometimes it ends there. An adult's clear, consistent statement that she lives where she wants, works where she wants and keeps her own money will be given real weight by a court. The value of the complaint does not vanish, though. If there is evidence of a threat to her brother, of money being taken from her, or of abuse during her childhood in that household, those are separate offences that stand or fall on their own material, not on her willingness to complain.

Her refusal to return to her parents is also not evidence that nothing happened. Families that left a girl behind for being a girl do not get to call the arrangement a happy one just because she is afraid of them.

Frequently Asked Questions

Where to start if this is your situation

Write it down before you call anyone. A one-page note in date order — what you saw, what you were told, who told you, and which parts are your own observation. Gather the earlier complaint if there is one, with its date and the police station, the addresses and phone numbers of everyone involved, and the victim's approximate age with the basis for it. Keep the original of anything on your phone. Then a short covering note saying what you want done: registration, or an application to the Magistrate, or both.

Send that to the chamber and we will tell you plainly whether there is a case here or whether the honest answer is that there is not. Both answers are given at the same fee. You can reach us through /contact-us, or fix a time at /book.

This article is general information about Indian law and is not legal advice on your own situation. Every complaint turns on its own facts and on what can actually be proved.

Advocate Sudhir Rao, Supreme Court of India

Facing a similar matter? Speak to a criminal advocate in Delhi — Advocate Sudhir Rao appears in bail, trial and appellate matters before the Delhi District Courts, the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India.