Gupta (centre) at the premiere of her film. A Telegraph picture

Siliguri, Sept. 24: A 13-year-old girl from a village near Panitanki, about 40 km from here, goes missing. She is traced to a brothel in Mumbai and rescued. But strangely, she goes missing again from police custody. To this day, her mother harbours hope of her return.

This real-life case and hundreds of others like it is the subject of an eye-opening documentary, Land of Missing Children, which had its all-India premiere here today. The 23-minute film focuses on the trafficking of underage girls from villages near Siliguri to red-light areas of Mumbai and Calcutta.

The field producer of the documentary, first aired on Channel 4 in the UK a few months ago, is Emmy award winner Ruchira Gupta. Its reporter is Sam Kiley and its director Claudio von Planta, both associated with Channel 4.

The premiere coincided with the launch of a book, The Place Where we Live in is Called a Red-light Area, which portrays through drawings the thoughts of sex workers’ children. The events marked the beginning of a campaign against human trafficking by three organisations — Apne Aap Women Worldwide, Sonata Foundation and the public affairs office of the US Consulate, Calcutta.

Yesterday, in the morning, over 200 labourers, both men and women, managers and doctors associated with Nagrakata tea garden in Jalpaiguri turned up despite the inclement weather to see another film, The Selling of Innocents, which won Gupta the Emmy in 1997. The film was also shown at Jalpaiguri Cine Club in the evening, followed by interaction with the audience on the proposed Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act and other issues.

Similar programmes were also held this morning at the monthly meeting of Sangobaddho, a network of HIV positive persons in north Bengal.

Gupta said the reason behind launching the campaign here was that Siliguri and its hinterland have become a major hunting ground for traffickers, especially after the closure of the tea gardens. Members of the public need to contribute to save the young girls, who have the same right to education and life as any other.