Ruchira Gupta: Anti-Trafficking Activist & Apne Aap Founder, Emmy-Winning Journalist

A Childhood Shaped by Freedom and Justice  I started writing early, contributing to my school magazine, Lotus Bird, before going on to study English literature at Loreto College, Calcutta University. When I heard that a new newspaper, The Telegraph, was about to launch, I ran straight to MJ Akbar, asking for a job. He refused, saying they only hired graduates. Two years later, degree in hand, I went back and asked again. This time, he hired me—on the condition that I would complete my honors alongside my work.Balancing college and a newsroom was challenging, but The Telegraph was an exciting place to be. It was one of the few papers that gave women real opportunities at a time when journalism remained largely male-dominated. Yet, I noticed a glaring divide—when men were at the center of a story, it was considered political; when women were, it was dismissed as ‘cultural.’ Reporting opened my eyes. I covered caste conflicts, insurgencies, and gender violence, and I saw firsthand how crimes against women—rape, dowry deaths—were pushed to the inside pages, while elections and caste riots took the front page. Women weren’t seen as political actors; they existed in the news only as victims. I wanted to change that.Determined to go further, I left my job and moved to Bombay to work at The Indian Post, a newspaper still in its pre-launch phase. While working on dummy editions, I traveled across Maharashtra, witnessing the realities of rural life. In villages in Thane and Malegaon, I saw Adivasi women walking for hours to fetch water, only to find that local authorities controlled access to taps—turning them on only in exchange for sexual favors. It was a chilling realization of how power functioned in the most fundamental ways, and it strengthened my resolve to bring these stories to light.As The Indian Post kept delaying its launch, I grew restless. Every day, I walked past The Independent, where Vinod Mehta’s office was. One day, I decided to walk in and ask for a meeting. I was in my twenties, driven only by determination. To my surprise, he agreed to see me. I asked him to appoint me as the Eastern Region Correspondent in Calcutta. Perhaps he saw something in my confidence because he said yes. I pushed further—could I have the title of Special Correspondent? He agreed again.With a shoestring budget but no shortage of ambition, I immersed myself in reporting. I covered caste struggles in Bihar and Odisha and the Gorkhaland movement in Assam in the early 1980s. Some days, two of my stories would be published in the same edition. I interviewed political figures, activists, and even cricket legend Imran Khan when he played at Eden Gardens. Journalism was more than just a job—it was my platform to question, to challenge, and to give voice to those the world overlooked.From Reporting to Witnessing History: The Babri Masjid DemolitionI was in Ayodhya in 1992 when they demolished the Babri Masjid, standing on a rooftop with Advani and other leaders, watching history unfold. But I couldn’t just observe from a distance. I needed to be on the ground, to verify facts firsthand, to speak to those caught in the storm. So, I went inside the mosque.Dressed in jeans and a shirt, I covered my head with a handkerchief. In the charged atmosphere, I was mistaken for a Muslim. Before I could explain, a mob turned on me. Hands grabbed at my throat, squeezing, silencing. In the chaos, I was also sexually assaulted. As my vision blurred, I felt myself slipping away—until a man I had interviewed earlier recognized me. He fought through the mob, pulled me out, and broke his leg in the process.Back on the rooftop, shaken but determined, I turned to Advani and pleaded with him to stop the violence. He lifted his binoculars, watching houses burn in the distance. Then, he dismissed me with a wave of his hand. Forget it. Something historic is happening—celebrate.At that moment, I understood, in the deepest way possible, what it meant to be a woman. To witness injustice, to scream for it to stop, and to be ignored. To be silenced, dismissed, and erased.Speaking Out and Facing Backlash    After resigning from Business India, I needed to get away. The threats, the constant fear, the realization that truth alone wasn’t enough to create change—it all left me drained. I went to Nepal, hoping for a break, a chance to clear my head. Instead, I stumbled upon a story that would change the course of my life.I followed the trail to the Indo-Nepal border, just 14 kilometers from my mother’s childhood home. There, I saw it unfolding in real time. Girls—some as young as ten—being led across in buses and trucks while border guards looked the other way. Some of them were dressed in their finest clothes, excited, believing they were heading to a city for work or marriage. Others were silent, their faces frozen in fear. I tried to speak to them, to understand, but before I could, they were gone—disappearing into a system I was only beginning to grasp.What I saw in Mumbai’s red-light districts will never leave me. It was a marketplace of human flesh. Women and girls stood behind iron bars, like caged animals, while men roamed the narrow lanes, inspecting them, choosing the ones they wanted. The younger the girl, the higher the price. I met a 15-year-old girl forced to see 20 to 30 men a day. Another had tried to escape three times; now she was blind in one eye from the beatings she had endured as punishment. One girl had been sold at seven—too young to even remember life outside those walls. The man hesitated. Killing 23 women was too much trouble. He slunk away.The Selling of Innocents: Bringing the Story to the WorldThe result was 'The Selling of Innocents', a documentary that tore the veil off the horrors of sex trafficking. It exposed a system that thrived on silence, complicity, and the vulnerability of the powerless. The film won an Emmy for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, a moment that should have felt victorious.So, I took the Emmy back to where the story had begun—to the women in the brothels. They turned it over in their hands, tracing its edges, weighing it as if it held some kind of answer. Then one of them asked, "Will this get our daughters out?"I looked at them and said the only thing I could: "I don’t know how, but I will try."'Founding Apne Aap: Women Helping WomenApne Aap was born in the red-light districts of Mumbai, not as an organization but as a sisterhood. It started with 22 women who had been trafficked—women who had spent their lives being bought and sold, but who now wanted something more. We sat together, sharing tea and stories, and I asked them what they needed.So, we began. We rented a small room in a municipal school, laid out straw mats, and brought in a teacher. Chalk, pens, paper, and a little food—that was the foundation of our first community classroom. The children were eager, ready to learn. But when we tried to enroll them in school, the principal refused. He said he wouldn’t admit children of prostitutes.That moment was just the beginning. Over the years, those same children grew up to become police officers, nurses, artists—even animation designers working in Paris and New York. We transformed red-light districts into what we called green-light districts—places where women had choices, where their daughters had futures beyond prostitution.Fighting trafficking in India wasn’t enough. To dismantle the system, I had to go beyond borders—to where policies were made, where laws were written, where power truly lay.In the United States, I helped shape the Trafficking Victims Protection Act (TVPA), shifting the burden of proof from victims to traffickers and securing funding for shelters and legal aid. Across Europe, I pushed for the Nordic Model in France, Sweden, Norway, Ireland, and Canada—decriminalizing prostituted women while penalizing buyers.But there were battles I lost. One of them was with Bill Gates and the global AIDS programs. His foundation funded condom distribution in red-light districts instead of helping women escape. When I argued for education instead, he dismissed me. "What’s the guarantee they’ll even finish school?" he asked. I shot back, "Your kids are at Stanford. What’s the guarantee of anything? At least give them a chance." Years later, when his ties to Jeffrey Epstein surfaced, I understood his indifference. This is not just my fight—it belongs to every girl who was ever sold, every mother who watched her daughter be taken, every woman who was told she had no choice. We fight to dismantle a system that treats women as disposable. We fight because no girl should inherit a life of exploitation.I now teach courses at NYU, training the next generation of activists, journalists, and change-makers. Because this fight must continue beyond me. We need more voices, more warriors, more people who refuse to accept that prostitution is "inevitable." I believe in a world where no woman or child is for sale. Where a girl’s body is her own—not a commodity to be bought and sold.