Four Februaries ago, Born into Brothels, the real-life story of children of Kolkata’s sex workers in Sonagachi, got the Oscar for the Best Documentary Feature. Since then, two of the eight children who featured in the film have gone to the US where they are students, helped by a charity financed by the film’s proceeds.

But one child, Anjali (her name changed), who was in her teens when she appeared in Oscar celebratory pictures, cutting cakes to beaming with joy posing with her fellow cast and crew, is today one of the 5,000 full-time prostitutes in Sonagachi — the same profession her mother was in — trapped in the same world whose walls the film hoped to break.

The objective of the film, according to directors US-based Zana Briski and Ross Kauffman, was to depict how art could bring hope in a despairing community. To that effect, Briski and Kauffman provided cameras to the children and taught them for years how to shoot pictures of their life and environment — this story was to become the basis of Born Into Brothels, which went on to win 13 major international awards.

Local police and some co-stars and photography students of Briski and Kauffman — who worked with Anjali on the film — have confirmed that she “joined the profession” months after the Oscar announcement.

A Detective Department official of the Kolkata Police confirmed to The Indian Express that on September 28, 2005, Anjali, after a tip-off, was “rescued” from a Sonagachi brothel at Masjid Bari Lane since she was a minor. She was moved to a juvenile welfare home where she stayed until February 2006 after which she was released. Police officials said that after her release, Anjali has returned to the flesh trade and by now she is an adult. In other words, police can look the other way.

When The Indian Express contacted Tarun Sangha, the main social-welfare NGO in Sonagachi that also cooperated with the film, its members confirmed that Anjali is now a prostitute. “She could not escape the poverty and the environment here,” said a senior club official, who did not wish to be named.

Another girl in the Born into Brothels team, who, after the film was released, spent some time with an internationally aided charity in South Kolkata, has “disappeared” in the past couple of years. She left the charity on her own, got married and now she is untraceable.

An update on the kids posted on the film’s official website shows that one of the boys associated with Born Into Brothels went to the US three years ago. He is said to have participated in film programmes through the Sundance Institute and New York University and is now studying both medicine and film.

Another girl also went to the US where she goes to school with financial assistance from Briski and Ross and their charity.