VZCZCXRO7513
RR RUEHCHI RUEHDBU RUEHNEH RUEHPW
DE RUEHBI #0089/01 0620748
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
R 030748Z MAR 09
FM AMCONSUL MUMBAI
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 6987
INFO RUEHNE/AMEMBASSY NEW DELHI 8227
RUEHNT/AMEMBASSY TASHKENT 0001
RUCNIND/ALL INDO COLLECTIVE
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0129
RUEHBJ/AMEMBASSY BEIJING 0135
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 0211
RUEHMO/AMEMBASSY MOSCOW 0079
RUEHRL/AMEMBASSY BERLIN 0014
RUEHFR/AMEMBASSY PARIS 0098
RUEHKO/AMEMBASSY TOKYO 0073
RUEHGV/USMISSION GENEVA 0121
RUEAIIA/CIA WASHDC
RHEHAAA/NSC WASHINGTON DC
RUEHBI/AMCONSUL MUMBAI 2164

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 03 MUMBAI 000089 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR GTIP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PHUM KWMN KDEM IN UZ SMIG
SUBJECT: WOMEN IN INDIA: UZBEK SEX WORKERS IN MUMBAI 
 
MUMBAI 00000089  001.2 OF 003 
 
 
¶1. (U) Summary:  In February, Congenoffs met with two 
Russian-speaking women from Uzbekistan who had been detained by 
the police for prostitution and brought to a local shelter.  The 
two women said they came to India to make money to pay for 
family medical expenses in Uzbekistan.  One admitted to being a 
sex worker.  They indicated unnamed "friends" helped them come 
to India to work, but were evasive about any more details. 
Separately, according to media reports, on February 8, New Delhi 
police arrested the alleged leader of a Central Asian 
trafficking ring.   With law enforcement pressure on red light 
districts in Mumbai, prostitution has become more diffuse, now 
seen more in the form of street walkers. The booming Indian 
economy in the recent past has attracted sex workers from the 
former Soviet Union.  While there is only circumstantial 
evidence that these women may have been trafficked, they may be 
part of a wider network of trafficked women from Central Asia to 
India.  End Summary. 
 
 
 
¶2.  (SBU) In late January, Prithi Patkar of Prerana, an NGO that 
runs a nighttime shelter and school for children of sex workers, 
 requested assistance from the Consulate in interviewing two 
women from Uzbekistan who had been detained in a prostitution 
raid in Mumbai.  Patkar said that one woman had been previously 
deported from India and returned to Uzbekistan, but had been 
picked up again. (Note: Prostitution itself is not illegal in 
India, but organized crime benefiting from the efforts of sex 
workers is a crime, thus the woman was being held at a shelter 
and not a jail. End Note.) 
 
 
 
¶3. (SBU) On February 2, PolOff and a Russian-speaking ConOff 
visited the shelter in Chembur, an eastern suburb of Mumbai and 
met with Aleena Ziglata, 21, and Diloram Khudarganova, 29. 
Neither woman spoke much English, but they were able to 
communicate in Russian.  Aleena acknowledged she was a sex 
worker who got caught with a client.  She said she had no 
husband or children, and that she needed to make money to pay 
for medical care for her mother who was in a coma in a hospital 
in Uzbekistan.  Aleena told Congenoffs that she was trained as a 
hairdresser in Uzbekistan, but was not able to make money at 
that profession.  Aleena said she had worked as a prostitute in 
China for a year and made good money.  A "friend," who advised 
her she could make good money as a sex worker in India, helped 
her come to India.  She explained that another "friend" in India 
paid for her plane ticket from Uzbekistan; this friend used 
different names and she claimed she could not recall the 
friend's real name.  According to her, she had only been in 
India for five days and was caught by the police on her first 
encounter with a client.  She was very surprised to learn from 
other girls at the shelter that they made only 100 Rupees ($2 
USD) for a sexual encounter with a client. 
 
 
 
¶4. (SBU) Aleena asked Congenoffs not to contact her family in 
Uzbekistan, nor the Uzbek Embassy in New Delhi.  She said she 
feared that officials at the Embassy would demand payment to 
stop them from telling her family about her situation.  She 
started to cry at the thought of never being able to face her 
family again after what she has been doing.  At the time of this 
meeting, Aleena had not yet been presented in court and no 
travel documents were available for review. 
 
 
 
¶5. (SBU) The second woman, Diloram, presented conflicting 
accounts of her journey to Mumbai.  Diloram first claimed to 
Congenoffs that she had visited India as a tourist last summer, 
and subsequently left voluntarily.  According to the court file 
which the social worker shared with Congenoffs, Diloram came to 
India first in June 2008 on a three-month tourist visa, but was 
deported by a court order when she was picked up in a 
prostitution raid in August 2008.  When asked about the court 
file from her prior "arrest," she admitted that last August a 
 
MUMBAI 00000089  002.2 OF 003 
 
 
police officer accompanied her from Mumbai to the flight leaving 
for Tashkent from New Delhi.  She said she was granted another 
tourist visa for India in September, but waited until December 
to make the trip. (Note:  The prior visa had not been cancelled 
or marked "revoked." End Note.)  Initially, Diloram said a 
"friend" named Laila in New Delhi paid for her flights here both 
times, but later said she came to Mumbai to see a boyfriend. 
When asked for information to contact the boyfriend, she said he 
had since died.  She eventually provided the telephone number 
for the "friend" in New Delhi which was provided to the social 
worker. 
 
 
 
¶6. (SBU) Throughout the meeting, Diloram maintained that she was 
not a sex worker.  She said that she was just walking along the 
sidewalk in Bandra (an upscale northern suburb of Mumbai) when 
she was picked up by the police.  The court-appointed social 
worker told Congenoffs that the charge against Diloram was based 
on the testimony of a man who claimed to have been a client, but 
she had been detained by police before any sexual acts had 
occurred.  She said the court assigned her an attorney, but the 
attorney could not speak Russian and she could not communicate 
with him. 
 
 
 
¶7. (SBU) Diloram told Congenoffs that her five-year-old daughter 
is sick, and she needed money to pay for her care.  She said she 
had three years of training as a nurses' aide, but could not 
make money in Uzbekistan.  She said her daughter is living with 
her parents as her husband died from a drug overdose.  Diloram 
did not want her parents notified that she was safe and in 
Mumbai; she said she had told her parents she was leaving to 
tour around Uzbekistan for a little while and did not want them 
to know what has happened to her here.  As with Aleena, she did 
not want Congenoffs to notify the Uzbek embassy for fear of 
blackmail or embarrassment if her family were told. 
 
 
 
¶8. (SBU) PolOff contacted the American Embassy in Tashkent which 
provided information regarding shelters for rehabilitating sex 
workers in Uzbekistan.  Separately, the anti-trafficking NGO 
International Justice Mission was asked by the court to identify 
rehabilitation facilities or programs in Uzbekistan.  Before 
this information could be passed to the two women, a Mumbai 
court released the two women from judicial custody.  According 
to Prerana, the court complied with their wish not to be 
deported or escorted back to Uzbekistan, and it is not known 
where these women have gone. India has very limited resources 
for rehabilitating sex workers; with limited English language 
skill, these women could not avail themselves of even 
psychological counseling that might be available had they stayed 
in the local rehabilitation system.  Embassy Tashkent advises 
that the Government of Uzbekistan has opened a state-run shelter 
for women and has been cooperative on trafficking issues, and 
believes GOU would try to assist these women or any others who 
want to return home. 
 
 
 
Trafficking Ring Leader Arrested 
 
--------------------------------- 
 
 
 
¶9.  (U) Media reports indicate that on February 8, police in New 
Delhi arrested an Uzbek national who is alleged to be the leader 
of a human trafficking ring. Police said the leader of the ring, 
32-year-old Intizar Imomova, alias Laila, lured women from 
Russia and Central Asian countries by making promises of 
lucrative employment here, but upon arrival, confiscated their 
travel documents and made them work as prostitutes.  The reports 
indicate that the girls were blackmailed into complying as 
prostitutes.  According to news reports, Imomova is a "serial 
 
MUMBAI 00000089  003.2 OF 003 
 
 
offender under the Immoral Trafficking Act" and had been 
arrested earlier in the state of Himachal Pradesh. 
 
 
 
¶10. (SBU) Comment:  Meeting these two Uzbek women provided a 
hazy glimpse into the paths and patterns of sex workers coming 
to India from Central Asia.  If their stories are true, they 
appear to have sought sex work in India for economic reasons, a 
position Mumbai's police have echoed repeatedly when referring 
to sex workers from Russia and Central Asia, which are the most 
obvious contingent of foreign sex workers.  Whether or not they 
are part of a larger trafficking ring is unclear; notably, one 
mentioned that her contact in New Delhi was "Laila," the alias 
of the women arrested for trafficking.  In addition, both 
referred to a number of "friends" who aided, or encouraged, 
their trip to India.  However, at least one had possession of 
her passport, which would not be consistent with the pattern 
reported of the prostitution ring in New Delhi.  The social 
worker did not report that any of these "friends" had sought 
their release, the women did not indicate that they were being 
held in Mumbai against their will, nor did they express fear for 
their families should they return.  Nevertheless, both women 
refused to divulge detailed information about how they came to 
India, and wanted nothing to do with Uzbek authorities.  End 
comment. 
KAUFFMANEC