Even late at night, Rangu Souriya’s phone doesn’t stop ringing. She is coordinating rescues, comforting survivors, and arranging shelter. When one of the girls she rescued calls her in tears, Souriya fears the girl’s husband has discovered her past. “I still feel like I’m in the red-light area,” the girl says. Souriya calms her like a mother. “Every case, every rescue teaches me something new about trauma,” Souriya says as she cuts the call.
Souriya is a women’s and child rights activist and the founder of Kanchanjunga Uddhar Kendra, a non-profit based in Siliguri that rescues and rehabilitates victims of sex trafficking. Without any formal training in rescue work or counseling, she has saved countless girls from across India and Nepal. “It’s never easy. The traffickers brainwash the girls so deeply that they believe escaping will only bring them more harm. It takes immense effort to convince them otherwise. I do a lot of self-talking, try to see situations from different angles, and find new ways to reach them. Everything I’ve learned has come from being on the ground, doing the work, and learning from each rescue.”
A native of West Bengal, Souriya’s first rescue happened in 2004 in her hometown, Panighatta, where she helped a 13-year-old girl who was trafficked to Rohini, Delhi. “I wasn’t trained, had no contacts in the police, no understanding of how traffickers operate. But with help from a few like-minded people and a lot of trial and error, we managed to rescue her. That success gave me courage, and I never looked back.”
Since then, Souriya says that trafficking itself has changed. What was once confined to brothels or domestic work has now expanded into bonded labour. “Factories, farms, industries—people are being trapped everywhere,” she says. “Even educated people. Traffickers use social media now. And unemployment has made things worse.”
What has motivated Souriya in her journey is her mother’s quiet courage. “Women would come at night to our house when I was a child, and my mother would help them,” she remembers.
The challenges of her work go far beyond the emotional. “Rescuing takes an enormous amount of effort,” she says. “I don’t have enough money, nor do I have a formal team. I’ve given up my sleep and appetite for this cause. At night, I have to stay alert because any moment, a call could come.”
But even then, Souriya doesn’t stop, because helping people, she believes, is never an obligation. “It’s just who I am,” she says.