An artist spraying silhouettes of girls on public walls in Kolkata more than six years ago led a filmmaker to the world of trafficking and survivors.
The filmmaker and the crew recently toured Northeast and Bengal with a documentary on the same subject.
From the Shadows, a film by Miriam Chandy Menacherry, has been screened at several places. It was screened at the American Center in Kolkata on May 15.
A screening happened on June 18 at Hingalganj, a village in the Sunderbans, near the India-Bangladesh border, in North 24-Parganas.
The screening was part of a two-day film festival in the Sunderbans on both sides of the international border, organised by Film Independent, a US-based organisation that supports independent filmmakers.
A screen and a projector had to be ferried across the river for the festival. Two films each from India and Bangladesh, telling stories from the mangrove delta, were screened at Hingalganj.
“This was a wonderful opportunity for me to share my documentary about survivors of child trafficking, that took me six years to capture, with the people it most affects," said Chandy Menacherry.
Her film opens with shadows representing missing girls and some hard-hitting numbers. The National Crime Records Bureau shows that 1,08,234 children went missing in India in 2020. In the country, a child goes missing every eight minutes.
The film tries to look at some of the girls behind the shadows. It sheds light on the notorious world of child trafficking and the relentless struggle of activists who have devoted their lives to secure justice for survivors.
The film has made it to the shortlist of multiple international awards.
Chandy Menacherry was drawn to the subject after watching Leena Kejriwal, founder of the Missing Link Trust, which spearheads a public art campaign to sensitise people to the plight of girls trafficked for sexual exploitation.
"I was intrigued by Leena's work. Why would someone put a shadow in a public place? I kept seeing the shadows in different cities. As a filmmaker, it drove me to what is lying behind the shadows," Chandy Menacherry told this newspaper after the screening at the American Center.
Her past works include The Rat Race, which tells the story of a dancer who moonlights as a rat killer in Mumbai, and Lyari Notes, based on a group of children living in an area known for gang wars, who chose music over violence.
The narrative of From the Shadows is not linear. It jumps back and forth between two trafficking cases, one that saw the conviction of a notorious trafficking kingpin in Delhi two decades ago. The other case has been dragging on for years.
A girl from South 24-Parganas who was trafficked to Delhi in 2014 managed to escape and return a year later. With the help of Kejriwal, the survivor filed a case.
The fight for justice has been long and cumbersome, fraught with legal delays, stigma and threats from the alleged perpetrators. But Kejriwal and the survivor have not given up.
"The name of a key trafficker, a neighbour of the survivor, was not included in the chargesheet. The investigating officer kept skipping court appearances. The chargesheet did not include Pocso (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) charges," Kejriwal told this newspaper.
The other story is that of a survivor whose testimony was crucial in the conviction of a trafficking mastermind in Delhi around two decades ago.
"The woman, who is now a mentor to survivors, had testified when around 400 witnesses turned hostile," said Hasina Kharbhih, founder of a Shillong-based NGO, who helped the survivor in her legal battle.
The survivor is now part of the management of the Impulse NGO Network, which works for the rehabilitation of trafficking survivors.
After the screening at the American Center, Chandy Menacherry, Kejriwal, Kharbhih and a bunch of people associated with the film interacted with the audience.
Juan Clar, deputy director of the American Center, said: “We have been working with civil society partners and state governments for more than 10 years to create constituencies, build coalitions, and achieve results in the fight against human trafficking.... We should continue to work together to end human trafficking.”
