Surat, Oct. 5 :    Surat, Oct. 5:  Surat's red light district - the only one in Gandhi's Gujarat - is out of business. All the brothels on Mirza Swamy Road, in the heart of the city, are locked up and the sex workers have left. In February, police commissioner Kuldip Sharma launched a drive to 'clean' the area, which houses several schools and places of worship. The police conducted raids, arresting sex workers and humiliating customers. Some regulars were thrashed in public. One sex worker, Ganga, died in police custody. Three mausis (former workers) - Munni aged 80, Sobhabai aged 60 and Geenabai aged 75 - died within days of being forced to leave the area. Those who are alive are facing starvation. Ilaben has not sent money to her sister, who is dependent on her, for the past six months. Driven to prostitution by poverty, Ilaben has been sending money orders every month since she arrived at a brothel here so that her children can study. But now that has had to stop. Anita has spent all her savings in the past few months. 'I have no money to buy even milk,' she says, worried that the shopkeeper might refuse to give her credit. Ilaben and Anita are two of the 4,000-odd sex workers in the red light district facing an uncertain future after the police crackdown. 'If the police raids continue, we will have to either move to Mumbai or face death,' said Usha, who is from Pune. Though prostitution is illegal, police in most cities do not usually raid red light districts. The Surat commissioner is determined to carry on the raids as 'the law does not permit such activity near educational and religious institutions'. But there is a ray of hope for the sex workers. The National Human Rights Commission has pulled up the police commissioner for 'violating the human rights of sex workers' and told him to first find ways to rehabilitate them. A Delhi-based NGO, Bharitya Patita Udhar Sabha, had approached the rights panel. Sharma tried to skirt the responsibility, saying that 'despite our sincere efforts, we have not been successful in rehabilitating them because there are some vested interests who do not want them to be rehabilitated'. Sex workers say it is not that they do not want to be rehabilitated. But past experience has been discouraging. 'Once a sex worker, always a sex worker. Even if you want to come out of this hell, you cannot. The stigma remains and the society does not accept you,' says Bhanuben, sex worker and peer educator working for Dr Vikasben Desai's project - Partners in Sexual Health. Dr Desai of Surat Medical College, who is supervising the project aimed at educating the high-risk behaviour group, asserts that rehabilitation of sex workers is not possible without an independent agency devoted to this purpose. About 10 years ago, the then police commissioner had arranged marriages of 40 sex workers with autorickshaw drivers and factory workers, she said. But except for one, all others were back in the brothels soon after, proving Bhanuben's point.