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Real Heroes
AJEET SINGH
Category : Real Heroes
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 In the sacred city of Varanasi, trafficking of minor girls was common. That`s till Ajeet Singh decided to take the pimps and brokers head on. He knew breaking the police-pimp nexus would not be easy, so he gathered thousands of citizens and rescued over 50 minor girls. His organization Guria is also fighting over 200 cases against child traffickers in courts. Today Shivdaspur, the red light area of Varanasi, wears a different look.

Further information About Ajeet Singh

Ajeet Singh is the President of Guria, a human rights organisation fighting against the sexual exploitation of women and girls, particularly those forced into prostitution and trafficking. Ajeet Singh is also a member of the Central Advisory Committee on combating child prostitution and trafficking of women and children, and of the State Monitoring Committee for the abolition of child prostitution and the exploitation of women. Front Line previously issued an urgent appeal concerning the death threats issued against Ajeet Singh and other members of Guria on 19 August 2008.

 

On 6 March 2009, Ajeet Singh was threatened, harassed and abused by members of the local police following a rescue operation in the red light district near Meerganj in Allahabad City that he was conducting together with other members of Guria.

 
Guria made an application to the Allahabad District Administration requesting police assistance during their operation to rescue what they believe to be up to 100 children and women held in a number of brothels in the area. The Additional District Magistrate, directed by the City Magistrate, ordered the police to accompany the human rights defenders and they succeeded in rescuing 20 trafficked women and children from the brothels. Despite this the police only filed First Information Reports (FIR) for 17 of those persons. During the operation the police were reportedly uncooperative and refused to search many of the highlighted places where children may have been confined and also did not intervene when minor girls were being removed from the premises by persons from the brothels.

 

 

 Following the rescue operation Ajeet Singh was brought to Badshahi Mandi police outpost, in the Kotwali Allahabad police station, where he was harassed and threatened by members of the police. A police representative threatened Ajeet Singh that he would be killed during a police encounter or he would be implicated in criminal cases. Mr Bhola Singh, Ms Chanchala, Mr Sunil Kumar Singh, Mr Umashankar, Mr Rambahal, Mr Amit Kumar Gupta, Mr Abhai Kumar and Ms Anita Singh, all members of the Guria rescue operation, were assaulted by police officers.

On 8 March 2009, Chetna Vichar Dhara, and Amar Ujala, both Hindi daily newspapers, published news articles in which they implied that Ajeet Singh and members of Guria had been involved in illegal activity and alleging that they had tried to extort money from the brothel owners.

On 8 July 2008, Ajeet Singh and other members of Guria received death threats relating to their work against human trafficking. As of yet, no arrests have been made in connection with this case and Guria believe that there has been no investigation into the threats.

Front Line believes that the human rights defenders were harassed and threatened as a result of their legitimate activities in defence of human rights and fears for their physical and psychological integrity. Front Line is concerned that this latest harassment forms part of an increasing trend of threats and attacks against human rights defenders in India.