Trafficking - A challenge to Humanity

Darjeeling : They are not just untold stories captured on lens. They have a mission too.

“The purpose is to create an awareness on trafficking,” said Anirban Dutta, the man behind the exhibition, Trafficking — A Challenge to Humanity.

Travelling through the closed gardens of north Bengal, the 33-year-old photographer has stitched together a story of lost girls and human trafficking as an issue which needs to be addressed socially and not just legally.

Just as there is Dipen Mazrani with a passport-sized photograph of Asana who had disappeared from Jalpaiguri two years ago, Dutta has also clicked Rajantilla rummaging through a bunch of papers for a picture of her missing child.

The four-day exhibition, which is being held at the Loreto College here, was inaugurated today with around 30-40 photographs.

The organisers of the exhibition — Church of North India and the London-based Council for World Mission (South Asia regional council) — are hoping that the plight of these parents, mostly garden workers who have lost their children to trafficking, will get international attention.

Dutta who is associated with Metamorphosis — a Mumbai based non-profit development organisation — has worked extensively in countries like Nepal and Bangladesh where trafficking is a social evil that has not yet received its share of attention.

“I want to keep alive the stories long enough after they have stopped hitting the headlines,” he said. The photographer also said the series was not complete and that he would go back to the garden soon.

Dutta has also been associated with a pilot project of the Indian Railways on HIV/AIDS launched in Andhra Pradesh.

Source: The Telegraph