Seated in the ladies’ room of the Central Police Station of Ulhasnagar Zone, Thane Police, the minor girl is in skintight black jeans and a black top with a bindi and henna-painted palms, appearing shy, but relaxed.

Recounting her ordeal, the native of Sarapur in 24 North Parganas, West Bengal, says she is a Std VIII dropout from a Durgapur school. Her statement to the police says: “I had gone to Savdapuri Bazaar in Howrah, alone, to get my photograph clicked. A man who later identified himself as Raj forcibly made me smell something. I then fell unconscious. Later, I found I was in a room with Raj. He assured me that I would be taken to my house, but instead we boarded a train from Howrah station. We got down at Kalyan Terminus, stayed in a lodge for three four days.” During this period, she says in her statement, Raj tried to rape her but she would begin to scream every time.

She was then handed over to a pimp identified as Raju Shah. “He kept me at a bar, Dream Night, in Dombivli for two months where I worked as a bar girl. Customers who liked girls were taken to a room upstairs.

I was raped several times,” her statement reads. Raju would collect Rs 12,000 from her each month.

A fellow bar dancer then helped her and on February 24, called her cousin. “I spoke to my mother. She encouraged me to escape.”

When she told Raju she wanted to return home, he confined her in an Ulhasnagar hotel. She escaped from the bathroom window and entered the bathroom of the hospital on the floor below. “A nurse was taken aback on seeing me. I narrated my story to her and she took me to the police,” the statement says.