Press TV - Award-winning Iranian director Tahmineh Milani is planning to make a film about the child victims of human trafficking in India.

Tahmineh Milani

Milani has done extensive research about child trafficking in India and will use them in making her film with an Indian cast, ILNA reported.

"I spent the New Year holidays in India's eastern state of Bihar at the invitation of former UNICEF official Ruchira Gupta," Milani said.

Emmy Award-winning journalist Ruchira Gupta is known as an international anti-trafficking expert, whose documentary The Selling of Innocents highlighted the trafficking of women and children from Nepal to India.

Referring to child trafficking as a contentious issue in the Indian society, Milani said, "Poverty forces many Indian families to sell their minor daughters to brothels."

"Criminal gangs take the highest share in this chaos with trafficking innocent girls," she added.

Every year a large number of girls from Bangladesh, Nepal and rural India are forced to join the red light districts.

In 2007, the Indian Ministry of Women and Child Development reported that 2.8 million sex workers lived in India, with 35.47 percent of them having entered the trade before the age of 18.

... Payvand News - 04/05/09 ... --