On 19 May 2022, a three-justice panel of India’s Supreme Court ruled that voluntary sex work is not criminalised under Indian law and that sex workers should be treated with dignity. They directed police to refrain from “interfering or taking any criminal action against adult, consenting sex workers.” The court also directed state governments to conduct a survey of protection homes administered under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA), “so that cases of adult women, who are detained against their will can be reviewed and processed for release in a time-bound manner”.
Sex worker-led groups in India hailed the court’s decision. Police and NGOs have long used the ITPA to indiscriminately raid and ‘rescue’ adult, consenting women from sex work and detain them for long periods inside locked ‘protective homes’. And now that this new ruling has been issued, women are already rising up to demand their release from confinement.
Indefinite detention
Forced, fully legal confinement of sex workers in India has long been a way to control women considered to be trafficked. In 2018 and 2019, we led a small team of researchers in the Indian states of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh to conduct interviews with women housed in 15 different shelters, including with 32 ITPA detainees. We encountered only one ITPA detainee that willingly remained inside a protection home. All others were kept unwillingly under lock and key.
