Excerpt: Sunitha Krishnan's 'I Am What I Am' Details A Fight Against Sex Trafficking

Sunitha Krishnan's I Am What I Am chronicles her personal journey as a tireless activist and child survivor of sexual assault. The memoir highlights the impact of her non-profit organisation, Prajwala, and her determination to confront and combat sex trafficking in India. The book focuses on Sunitha's struggles and resilience, making it a powerful testament to the strength of the human spirit and the ability of one individual to inspire significant change.

About Sunitha Krishnan

Sunitha Krishnan is a social activist known for her work in combating sex trafficking and advocating for the rights and rehabilitation of survivors in India. Her journey has been marked by extraordinary personal risk and relentless challenges. 

Sunitha has faced physical attacks and death threats from trafficking networks, while also confronting bureaucratic inertia, inadequate rehabilitation infrastructure, inconsistent policy implementation, and deeply entrenched social stigma against survivors. 

In her book I Am What I Am, she shares the story behind building Prajwala and creating a comprehensive model of prevention, rescue, rehabilitation, and reintegration of thousands of survivors across India. 

Book Excerpt: 'I Am What I Am'

Prologue: When I Wanted to Kill God

The shrill ring of the phone jolted me from my sleep. At 5 a.m., this could only be an emergency. It was the police. I could hear the worry in the man’s voice. I was to go right away to the railway tracks behind the Falaknuma railway station.

I was ready in under five minutes; my team and I had the drill down pat. So, I telephoned Akbar and asked him to bring Jaffer’s autorickshaw over. We left immediately. With the streets empty, we reached in about ten minutes. In the distance, I spotted a few policemen huddled together. It must be an abandoned child, I realised. The police wanted to hand her over to us, as they had many times in the past. I had streamlined this process over the last
four years of doing this work. 

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, 2000 was just out, and while it was not yet properly implemented, it provided the legal framework for extending care and protection to children like the ones I served. Our homes for both children and adults were now functional. We had thirty children already in our home, and we had slowly begun to accept children from the newly formed Child Welfare Committee, along with those who were referred by police
stations.

Ours was the only home in the area, so the police—especially those in the Old City of Hyderabad—referred many cases to us. It was always a big challenge to refuse children who had eloped or had been abandoned, but I was very clear about my mandate: I would only take in children of women in prostitution, victims of rape and sex trafficking, and HIV-positive children. It was always a hard decision, but we needed to optimise our limited resources and skills.

My team may not have had academic qualifications, but they were well trained. And with many of our own rescued women joining us, we had people with lived experience who intuitively knew what should be done. All this had helped us evolve a comprehensive programme to cater to the needs of the children we served. Anybody who visited our home could vouch for the outcome of our interventions.

To my mind, today would be one of those cases where the police just wanted to hand over the child, fulfil their responsibilities, and congratulate themselves for early-morning productivity. As I approached them, I went over possible reasons for refusing and the organisations I could refer them to instead. It was only when I was close enough to see their faces that I registered their horror and discomfort.I peered at the child and drew in a sharp
breath. There was blood all over. The girl—six or seven, maybe even younger—was alive and breathing, though unconscious. The policeman next to me leaned over and whispered something in my ear. I couldn’t make sense of it. I went down on my knees and gently touched the child.

She woke up, whimpering in pain. I reached out to pick her up. That’s when I realised her intestines were trailing out of her vagina. Her insides were torn through. She needed the hospital right away. I gathered her up, one hand on her shoulder, the other supporting her bottom, and started running. The policemen, shaken out of their stupor, ran with me towards Akbar, waiting by the auto. I asked one of them to get in and told the others to follow. At Osmania General Hospital, the doctors went still with shock when they saw the child. In seconds, though, their training took over, and they rushed her to the emergency ward.

It was then that I began to talk to the constable who had accompanied me. He told me that one of the beat constables had found the child at 4.45 a.m. near the railway tracks. The child appeared to have been gang-raped and thrown near the bushes. Maybe they thought they had killed her. But the beat constable realised that the child was alive. This constable, who was posted at the Chatrinaka police station, had sent several children to our home and had my number. His presence of mind and humaneness were definitely greater than his love for duty and protocol. Very often, lower-rung policemen first inform their senior officers and only then raise the alarm and alert agencies like ours. This, of course, means loss of precious time.

In this case, though, the intervention was prompt and the police action that followed was diligent. They had arrested six migrant workers, one of whom was the father of the girl. He and his friends had assaulted the child in a drunken rage and left her for dead. I am a deeply spiritual person. Over the years, my daily routine of prayers and meditation
had helped me focus on the task at hand without getting overwhelmed.

But that day, if God had appeared before me, I would have killed them with my bare hands. The child, Shaheen—just four years old—needed thirty-two stitches, several hours of surgery, and many more hours of rehabilitation. For days after, my faith in God remained shaken. I couldn’t understand how this all-compassionate being, whom I implicitly trusted, could let such brutality unfold. Why didn’t they stop it? How could a father join five others to
gang-rape his own child?

I had felt this way before, when a five-year-old we had taken in died of AIDS the very year he came to us. I had visited her at the hospital, not knowing those were her last moments. But perhaps she knew. She had clung to my arms as soon as I entered the ward, pleading, “Madam, mujhe hostel aana hai, mujhe jaane mat dena” (Madam, I want to come back to the hostel, don’t let me go).

Even as I reassured her that she would be fine, that she would recover soon enough and play with the other children, life left her body. I choked with anger. It was not fair. A young soul with hopes and dreams had been crushed, all because of one man’s lust. It would take me several years to understand that the gods were not looking the other way. That they sent people like that constable, like Akbar and me, to act. Why else had that constable happened to walk those tracks at that time? Why had he remembered me immediately and made the call? How did Akbar and I rush to the scene without thinking twice? What gave us the strength to do all that followed?

I realised something else as well. So long as I focused on the pain and trauma of the victims, I risked overlooking their power and resilience. It was crucial to work on the immense potential of human beings to tide over adverse situations and emerge as people capable of loving and sharing. I make sure the child understands that they have been wronged and that they should not be ashamed of being a victim. As their anger, pain, outrage, and unbearable sense of betrayal pour out, the child is cleared of the burden of a lifetime. Through unconditional love, empathy, and acceptance, they are able to see the beautiful person within. As we take that journey together, the child slowly regains dignity and a spirit to conquer all odds.

If not for that constable and us, Shaheen would not have been found, rescued, or rehabilitated. And if not for her own resilience, she could not have moved on to study law at a reputed institution. Perhaps it was also god’s work that there were people who investigated such crimes, dragged the perpetrators to court, and got justice for the victims. That individuals like me started demanding that the silence around sex crimes against women and children be broken.

Could I have done all this without witnessing so many cases? Would I have been moved to action if I hadn’t seen these cases at close quarters? There are, after all, billions out there who simply look away. Who else, other than the powerful force above us all, can compel us to bear witness? 

Was there a plan when God chose me and others to face this reality and fight it? For each time I see violence and violation, I also see a chance to end it.

Extract from 'I Am What I Am: A Memoir' by Sunitha Krishnan, published by Westland Books.