Love & Lies in a Mumbai Police Station

She accused me of running a brothel. The police called her an “unredeemable whore.” But I still chose love.

📍Mumbai, September 2016 (Robin)

“Good afternoon, ma’am. Please come to Kandivali police station quickly. We found another body in the national park this morning. She looks about sixteen to twenty.”

Five days earlier, Pinky had stepped off a train from an adventure camp. She never came home. Two days later, I filed a missing person report. One day after that, the police started calling me to identify every teenage body that turned up in Mumbai.

I brushed past Shweta on our narrow staircase. “I’m headed to the station again,” I told her. “Pray it isn’t Pinky.”

She nodded calmly. “I’ll pray for this girl in general. Hopefully it isn’t Pinky. But she’s still somebody’s daughter.”

Thankfully, it wasn’t her. But on the way home, Shweta’s words echoed: She’s still somebody’s daughter.

Pinky wasn’t easy to love. Brilliant, fiery, stubborn, but without her psychosis medication, extremely reckless. Donors, friends, even therapists told us to “focus our energy on the girls who really want help.” But Pinky had no one else. Every time she disappeared, I reminded myself: if we didn’t love her, no one would.

By the fifth day, the Kranti home was unraveling. None of the girls were asleep - some were having nightmares about kidnappers while the rest were using ouija boards to ask if Pinky was alive. At night, all twenty of us slept shoulder-to-shoulder on one floor, a six-by-fifty-foot line of fear, hope and sisterhood.

To lift their spirits, I sent them on a city-wide scavenger hunt - each rhyming clue led to an NGO, where they had to earn the next one through kindness: brewing chai for social workers, entertaining children with impromptu dance shows, brightening someone’s day before moving on. I was waiting at the final café, laptop open, heart finally light, when the phone rang.

“Pinky just showed up with five men,” Bani said. “She’s screaming and packing her clothes.”

I told her to lock the house from outside, left my laptop open on the café table, and asked the waiters to send my girls home when they arrived. Our day of joy had just turned back into survival.

When I reached, Pinky sat on a small bag packed with her belongings. “I’m leaving! I already got married!” she shouted.

A week overdue for her psychosis medication, she was in full spiral. I called the police to help us sort out the missing-person report. Four female officers arrived to walk us to the station, with five “husbands” following closely behind.

The inspector fired off questions: “Is your organization registered? How many girls? How old are they?” I answered patiently. Then his tone shifted.

“This young lady says you keep her locked up, sell her to men, fake passports, and pocket her earnings.”

My jaw dropped. Pinky sat silently, trembling with conviction.

For hours, I tried to convince the inspector that I wasn’t a trafficker. I showed registration papers, medical reports, hospital records. I explained that Pinky had traveled abroad for workshops and therapy programs, all with donors’ help. Finally, I found a recent news article about her achievements.

He skimmed it, then looked at me. “You’re so well-educated. Why are you wasting your life on these unredeemable whores? If I were you, I’d go get a real job.”

I wanted to scream. But I was too tired, too hungry, and too scared for Pinky.

Outside, a crowd of journalists was waiting - Muslim media outlets convinced I’d stopped Pinky from marrying because her husband was Muslim. The men had called them while I was inside. Cameras flashed. Microphones shoved toward my face.

I folded my hands. “She’s leaving of her own will,” I said.

Pinky walked out of the station, clutching her bag, surrounded by a dozen men. I didn’t know which one was the husband. I walked home and cried. I didn’t know what I’d failed at, only that I had failed.

Her “marriage” lasted one week. Hidden in a slum room, fed scraps, and abandoned outside our gate by her in-laws who said, “We NEVER want to see her again.”

When she saw me, Pinky collapsed into my arms, sobbing. “I’m so sorry. I know you’re the only person who’ll love me no matter how big of a mess I make.”

Those words didn’t erase the police station or the fear. They didn’t undo the week of nightmares. But they reminded me of something simple: love isn’t about fixing kids - it’s about holding them anyway.

Was that the last time Pinky ran away? No.
The last time she accused us of terrible things? No.
The last time we were accused of running a brothel? Definitely not.
Have we given up? Also no.

Because some children only get one chance at unconditional love. And for Pinky, we are it.