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At noon on a hot, sunny day, Rasiya* had a quick lunch at her one-room home in Kerala’s Perumbavoor before hurrying to catch a bus to Ernakulam South. The 45-year-old sex worker got ready for work in a blue salwar and with a dusting of talcum powder on her face. Locking her door, she said, “Usually, women like me wear a lot of makeup. I don’t like it. Maybe that’s why I don’t get enough work.” Saying that she was running late, Rasiya promised to meet again that evening near the Ernakulam South Railway Station.
Rasiya and several other migrant women in Kerala have been pushed into sex work by poverty, illness, and a lack of sustainable employment. As migrants, they have no access to even the meagre networks of support that sex workers native to Kerala have.
Their presence is met with violence and stigma. They are almost completely excluded from government support systems.
Later the same evening, TNM met Rasiya again near South Station. She was hesitant to meet in a particular restaurant, saying she would be recognised by people who have seen her working on the streets. “This is the first time someone preferred to sit and talk to me in a restaurant,” she said before opening up about her story of migrating to Kerala.
Rasiya came to Ernakulam from Murshidabad in West Bengal two decades ago when she was 25 years old. She came with her children, then one and three years old, after her husband had left them. Others in her town, including relatives, also came to Ernakulam with her.
Rasiya recalls taking up various kinds of jobs to raise her children, including working in a plywood factory in Perumbavoor. “I used to carry my two small children with me to the factory. On many days, I just couldn’t go to work because my health had begun deteriorating. And there was no one to watch over my children at the factory. That’s when I started doing sex work, on and off.” One of Rasiya’s distant relatives, also a sex worker, introduced her to the job.
As TNM previously reported, Kerala’s industrial sector is heavily dependent on migrant labour. Women workers are often forced to leave their young children unattended at the settlements they live in. These children are frequently exposed to sexual abuse and accidents.
Read: Unattended and vulnerable: Children of Kerala’s migrant communities face many risks
During her time at the plywood factories, Rasiya sometimes had to take her children back home to Murshidabad, but eventually they moved with her to Ernakulam permanently. Now, grown up, they are working as well.
After 10 years at factories, her poor health forced her to quit those jobs. She then opened a small eatery using a combination of her savings and money borrowed from friends and family.
She ran the eatery for a decade before she had to give that up too due to ill-health and financial difficulties. “It wasn’t bringing in much profit, and I couldn’t work for long hours. I also couldn’t afford to hire a helper,” she said.
In between factory jobs and running her eatery, sex work was her last-resort option during periods of acute financial hardship.
“I have tried to get out of sex work and get some other job. But eventually, I always had to return. Now this isn’t working either. I haven’t had a client in 10 days. Today was the first in all that time,” Rasiya said.
Sex workers in Perumbavoor often get only one client a day, sometimes none. When they do, they are paid a meagre Rs 1,000. Out of this fee, Rs 500 goes to paying for the use of a hotel room for 20 minutes. “I survived on Rs 500 for the last 10 days,” Rasiya added.
Her difficulties are worsened by police harassment. “The night patrol police chase us with lathis and assault us. Some women are taken to the station and harassed both mentally and physically before being released. The police say we’ve made the condition of the city worse, that sex work was nearly invisible before we came here,” she alleged.
Nazia*, another sex worker from Perumbavoor whom TNM spoke to, also alleged police harassment. Her workday begins at 1:30 pm under the scorching sun. When TNM called her, Nazia said, “Can I meet you in the evening? I have a lot to share.”
Nazia and her partner Abdul live in a rented room. One day, the Perumbavoor police arrested Abdul, a male friend who was staying with them, and their 69-year-old Malayali landlord Pareed.
“I had built a small shed with two rooms and rented them out to migrant workers. I didn’t even know they were doing sex work,” Pareed said, adding, “Police arrested two men from those rooms and then picked me up from my house, which is located far from the rentals. They also picked up Nazia from the road.”
Although Nazia wasn’t arrested – sex work itself isn’t a crime – she was detained for a long time and allegedly assaulted.
“That day, Nazia and another woman in custody were badly beaten. I heard them crying out in pain,” Pareed recalled.
Nazia also showed marks on her body from the assault. She said it wasn’t the first time she had been beaten by the police. “Getting hit with a lathi on the streets is very common. Where are we supposed to file a complaint?” she asked.
Abdul and his friend were also allegedly beaten in custody. At the time Nazia met TNM, Abdul was still receiving medical treatment for his injuries.
“They picked me up while I was walking back home after work. They beat me and another woman. The pain is still there. My partner is still under treatment. And they just threw us out of the station late that night. They locked our rooms so we had nowhere to go,” Nazia said.
Like many others, Nazia had come to Perumbavoor for factory work but was forced into sex work due to health issues. “I didn’t come here for this. But I need to survive. I can’t do heavy factory work anymore,” she said.
In contrast to Nazia and Rasiya’s lives, migrant women working in Perumbavoor’s red-light areas operate within a more systematic setup. But their conditions are far from secure. A long, single-storey building surrounded by tin sheets in Kandanthara houses dozens of women. Locals derisively refer to it as the place where “kachra log” (garbage people) live.
Inside, toddlers run about, and each room – tiny, dark, and windowless – is shared by a woman, her partner, and often, children. The women sit dressed and fully made up, waiting for clients.
“We pay Rs 1,000 a day for these rooms or Rs 30,000 to Rs 50,000 per month,” said 25-year-old Kalpana*. As she spoke, men around her grew hostile and warned her to stay silent.
Here too, many of the women came to Kerala looking for factory jobs and eventually ended up in sex work. “We need at least five clients a day just to afford rent. We can’t work on the streets as we have kids,” Kalpana said before retreating into her home.
“The women in red-light areas get more clients; even Perumbavoor’s local residents visit them. They are not attacked by police because their landlords pay them off,” Rasiya added.
Pareed echoed this. Landlords in red-light areas pay hefty bribes to the police, allowing operations to continue undisturbed.
Residents of these red-light areas said that while raids are frequent, they do not experience police brutality. However, they do face assaults from local residents. In Kandanthara, when TNM visited the settlement in the first week of May, it had recently been attacked. The sheets used to cover the area were torn down by some locals.
Two migrant women from West Bengal and Assam told TNM that they were brought to Ernakulam by men from their villages with promises of jobs at a plywood factory. However, after arriving, they were forced into sex work. Many such women continue to be exploited by the men who bring them to Kerala with false promises. The women are made to live with these men and hand over a share of their earnings.
Rasiya told TNM that the rise in the number of migrant sex workers in the state has made competition tough. “There are too many of us, which is why we don’t get enough clients,” she said.
According to sources in the Kerala State AIDS Control Society (KSACS), there are around 20,000 female sex workers, 17,000 male sex workers, and 2,600 transgender sex workers in the state as of 2023. However, the state Labour Department and KSACS officials told TNM that they do not have any data on migrant women engaged in sex work.
Dr Sreelatha R, Project Director at KSACS, said, “A large number of migrant women are in sex work. But most of them don’t register with us. We conduct awareness programmes on sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), but they are reluctant to participate. Many have fake or multiple Aadhaar cards, which complicates identification and prevents them from being included in government records."
Meanwhile, no support systems exist for migrant women who are pregnant or are mothers, nor are there efforts to regularly monitor their health. Even local sex worker organisations exclude migrants. Sex workers native to Perumbavoor whom TNM spoke to expressed xenophobia towards migrant sex workers. They added that it is impossible to include migrants in their organisations, as migrant sex workers keep moving to new localities.
Affirming that such sentiments are prevalent, George Mathew, chairperson of the Progressive Workers Organisation, said, “Xenophobia and othering are deeply rooted across all sections of society. Local sex workers exclude migrants, partly due to fears of losing work to them. All migrant workers, across industries, are stigmatised and excluded from the mainstream. The condition of migrant sex workers is even worse.”
George added, “Since they can’t be arrested for sex work, police detain them unlawfully and harass them. On the streets, they face physical violence. In red-light areas, they’re exploited financially. In Perumbavoor, sex workers are harassed and assaulted by the authorities, while those in settlements are forced to pay large sums for protection. Both groups face harassment, either physically or financially.”
A Special Branch Officer working under Operation Clean – Ernakulam police’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants – spoke with chilling nonchalance: “We can’t confirm their identity as they don’t have documents. No one cares; they’re sex workers. Many claim to be 25 years old, but some are clearly minors. We don’t even know what to do.”
He denied allegations of police brutality but admitted, “We don’t touch them unless they cause trouble on the streets.”
The legal framework for sex work in India is complicated. Sex work itself isn’t illegal. Ironically, however, laws such as the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA) – intended to protect the rights of sex workers – are used by police to harass them.
Provisions of the Act, such as section 3 (punishment for keeping a brothel or allowing premises to be used as a brothel) and section 4 (punishment for living on the earnings of prostitution), are used to arrest the partners of sex workers or house owners. Such misuse of the law has resulted in sex workers being refused rental housing, or being charged exorbitant rents that are significantly higher than the market rate.
In October 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) officially recognised sex workers as informal workers in an advisory on women’s rights. The advisory also said that migrant sex workers may be included in schemes and benefits for migrant workers.
However, a month later, the NHRC issued a second advisory citing the feedback of “stakeholders”. The second advisory said that, in accordance with the extant provisions of the law, sex workers cannot be categorised as informal workers, nor can they be registered as migrant sex workers. The advisory instead suggested that sex workers are provided the same benefits as informal workers during the COVID-19 pandemic on “humanitarian grounds”. The advisory also recommended that sex workers who are forced to return to their hometowns be provided with the same benefits meant for migrant workers.
None of these developments have shielded sex workers from continued police harassment. “The police may no longer register cases against them, but the brutality persists,” said George.
In a landmark 2022 verdict, the Supreme Court instructed police to treat sex workers with dignity and forbade abusive behaviour and coercion. The court directed police not to abuse sex workers either verbally or physically and warned against violence and coercion for sexual favours. The court also stressed the importance of sensitising police and other law enforcement agencies regarding the rights of sex workers.
Pointing out that sex workers are treated as a “class of people whose rights are not recognised”, the Supreme Court emphasised that sex workers are entitled to the same constitutional rights as any other citizen.
The Supreme Court didn’t stop there. It also directed the Union Government and state governments, through the National Legal Services Authority, State Legal Services Authority and District Legal Services Authority, to conduct workshops for educating sex workers about their rights, the legality of sex work, and the obligations of the police.
When asked if any sensitisation programmes had been created for police personnel, as per the Supreme Court’s directive, Thiruvananthapuram Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Ajeetha Beegum said, “No such programmes are held at the state level. But usually if there are any changes made to the law, police chiefs conduct knowledge programmes at the district level. They may have done so in this case too.”
Read: Why decriminalising sex work is crucial
*Names changed to protect privacy