Leena Kejriwal is confronting India’s sex trafficking epidemic with art, technology, and education (VIDEO)

Artist and photographer Leena Kejriwal grew up in Kolkata, in a home that sat on the main road leading out of Sonagachi — one of Asia’s largest red-light districts. “As a child, I would often see the women standing there,” she recalled. “We were always told to look away. The warning was clear: in this neighbourhood, girls could be caught and taken inside.”

Several years later, when Kejriwal returned to this neighbourhood as a photographer, all those childhood memories resurfaced, leaving her with questions: Why does this happen? How do these women end up here? How do the human traffickers get hold of the victims? For over a decade, sex abuse and exploitation became a preoccupation for her as an artistic project, reflected in all her artwork.

 “Over the course of a decade, the answers slowly became clear,” she said. “What I realised was that the public is the biggest stakeholder in sexual abuse and exploitation. That understanding led me to launch the Missing Public Art Project — an initiative aimed at engaging people in recognising their role in the issue, particularly as part of the demand.” The widely recognised silhouette — a black figure of a carefree young girl — personified all the girls lost into the black holes of sex trafficking.

In 2015, this Bandra resident started the Missing Link Trust with the vision to keep every girl safe from sex trafficking. An interaction with a human trafficking survivor — who said she did not know that something like this happens in the world — left a big mark on the artist. “That immediately made me realise that there has to be an education programme. Why wait for a girl to get trafficked to save her? Let’s save her before that happens!” she said.

The education programme has been their flagship initiative — a live, preventive intervention. “A programme like this needs to unfold over time. According to the WHO guidelines, it must be repetitive, immersive, and consistent in duration — because we’re aiming for long-term behaviour change. That’s why we begin by orienting the teachers, coordinating with the school timetable, and scheduling sessions class-wise and section-wise. Our team visits each section at least four times, sometimes even up to eight. It’s never a one-time intervention — the same child is engaged through multiple touchpoints.”

She integrated technology and art extensively in her work. Hence, the programme used fully audio-visual content to ensure the experience was immersive and to eliminate any potential bias from teachers or trainers. The NGO worked in collaboration with other stakeholders like experts in the field, police, research and data consultants, government agencies, and others.

Roshan Abbas, creative entrepreneur and founder, Kommune India, shares, “Missing Link Trust holds a rare kind of courage, the kind that chooses to face what most would rather look away from. Through art and storytelling, they open our eyes to the silent, urgent crisis of child sexual exploitation. But more than awareness, they spark empathy, dialogue, and action. In my conversations with Leena, I was struck by their unwavering clarity of purpose and deep humanity. Their work stays with you—like a powerful piece of art, it speaks to the kind of world we all hope to live in.”

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