Society’s dark underbelly

For decades, the media, whether national, regional, or local, has carried disturbing reports of sex offences ranging from organised prostitution and trafficking rackets to the systematic exploitation of local women and, more alarmingly, underage girls. These are not isolated incidents or recent aberrations but a long and troubling pattern that has unfolded in plain sight. Yet what is most striking is not merely the persistence of these crimes, but the sustained absence of collective outrage, policy direction, or coordinated intervention from civil society organisations, non-governmental organisations, and the state itself. Numerous discussions have taken place in seminars, workshops, and public fora over the years, but these conversations have rarely translated into preventive strategies or institutional responses. The result is a vacuum where rhetoric replaces action, and concern is expressed without responsibility being assumed. This inertia has come at a steep cost to vulnerable girls and to the moral credibility of society as a whole. A stark warning was issued years ago by North East Development Action and Networking, which reported that local girls had become among the most vulnerable targets of global human trafficking networks. Its findings included cases of women from Nagaland purportedly ending up in brothels in Mumbai as captives of pimps. In one such incident, 45 girls were reportedly lured to the city, subjected to physical abuse, and then scattered beyond trace. Student bodies, too, have occasionally stepped in where institutions have failed. In August 2011, the Naga Students’ Union Chennai reportedly identified 14 girls from the state allegedly involved in prostitution in the outskirts of Chennai. A decade earlier, a senior police officer had publicly explained how trafficking networks operate, often with the help of local agents. These agents use newspaper advertisements, false promises of employment, even as ministries to lure victims. The same officer disclosed that in just five months of 2011, 106 people were reported missing in Nagaland, while only 36 could be traced. Closer to home, Dimapur has repeatedly surfaced as a hub of concern. In 2013, the Naga Council Dimapur revealed that the town alone had over 2,000 sex workers, many of them coerced or deceived into the trade. Despite the absence of officially declared red-light zones, specific localities have long been known as centres of operation, allowing exploitation to continue in an unorganised and largely unreported manner. Periodic police crackdowns have punctuated the years, from raids in Dimapur’s New Market area in 2018 and 2019 to arrests in Maharashtra in 2020 involving women trafficked from Nagaland. More recently, incidents in 2023 and 2025, including the rescue of minors and arrests linked to trafficking and abuse, have again underscored the scale of the problem. Even Naga political groups –NSCN(I-M) or GPRN/NSCN have, on occasions, intervened to rescue victims, a fact that raises uncomfortable questions about the absence of consistent civilian and governmental leadership. Equally troubling are reports of nightclubs and discos operating into the early hours in Dimapur, allegedly frequented by minors and functioning as informal meeting points for the flesh trade. Each of these incidents has been reported, documented, and then allowed to fade from public attention without sustained follow-up. Silence, in such circumstances, is not neutral. It protects perpetrators, endangers victims, and normalises exploitation. The continued lack of a coordinated response from CSOs, NGOs, and the government risks being read not merely as administrative failure, but as a deeper moral indifference.