Mumbai Red Light Areas & Honey Traps You Should Stay Away From

Mumbai is the largest city in India and the pride of all Indians. The city is home to one of the largest groups of wealthy people in Asia, and yet one of the largest slums in the world. It is a city with a complex mix of rich and poor. Mumbai by its virtue has a flip side to it, a side which most people have an urge to step into, but never speak about. It has sizeable sex industry, and its red-light district, second only to Sonagachi in Kolkata, is one of the largest in Asia.

Although prostitution is legal here, it’s not just that. The local brothels are often located in unsanitary conditions, and almost half of the prostitutes have HIV, so the risk of getting sick here is very high. In addition, prostitution takes place behind the curtain, but another thing that is associated with prostitution is the ‘honey trapping’ in the Mumbai red light areas, which lures people to many other places in the city. The honey trap, precisely in the direction of prostitution, is the sheer act of deceiving a person, probably a rich or powerful person, by attracting them through physical appearance and indulging them into any sexual activity to obtain the desired information, resulting in greater property damage to the targeted guests.

Mumbai Red Light Area: Kamathipura

Kamathipura, aka Kamathipuram, is the main red light area for sex workers in Mumbai. Located on Grant Road (East), this region has 1 to 14 streets or alleys which indulge in heavy prostitution and have a mount of brothels within the buildings and industry zone.

The intriguing part is, a number of business enterprises such as catering, textiles run parallel to these streets. From the main streets outside, you can't seem to tell the difference from any other city, but go down the alleys behind and you’ll see a lot of windowless buildings that are often home to brothels. Initially known as ‘Lal Baazar’, Kamathipura has a vast amount of prostitution happening in the daylight as well, unlike other areas. Of course, it gets even livelier after 10 p.m. Many parts of the city have ‘zones’ for attracting customers, and the most preferred locations are some fixed lanes near the local railway station, wherein a series of women and even gigolos will be decked up and ready for ‘the action’ that brings them a livelihood. However, from virtuous workers, a lot of the sex workers standing in the line have a very different intention. They may possibly be agents of their superiors and will not take up the random customers, but have a specific target.

More than being the ‘brothel capital’ of Mumbai, Kamathipura is also like any ‘normal place’, where people live, vendors go about their regular business of food, textiles, and stationery, and children play and giggle in some corner. However, many girls here grow up to be prostitutes like their mothers, as if sex work is their only way of making a living. The low status of women will not be improved for a long time.

History of Mumbai Red Light Area

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, large numbers of women from Europe and Japan were trafficked to Kamathipura, where they provided prostitution services to the soldiers and the locals. There was a busy road in Kamatipura known as the Safed Gully (White Lane) because of the European prostitutes who lived there during the British rule. Starting in the late 19th century, many Indian sex workers moved to Kamathipura. Large numbers of Nepalese women have also been trafficked into the region in recent decades, and Kamatipura’s sex industry continued to thrive. Eventually, it became one of the largest red light areas in Asia. Everyone who lived nearby could catch a glimpse of the women trying to elope. The pimps had a strong connection with the local police, so any sex worker or women making an attempt to escape would be caught, brought back, beaten, punished and humiliated in the locality.

By the mid-1990s, Kamathipura had around 50,000 sex workers, living in filthy rooms. Most of the area’s 3,000 or so buildings are dilapidated, with scarce safe drinking water and sanitation. With the rise of HIV-AIDS, the number of sex workers stooped to as low as 2,000 due to the severe actions taken by the local government. To make more money, the women started a small scale industry of ‘beedis’, thin Indian cigarettes. On the surface, the number of prostitutes has decreased, but in reality, they are simply more hidden. According to police statistics, there were 100,000 prostitutes working in the five-star hotels and brothels in Mumbai in 2005. It was not until 2018 that the local government demolished the ancient red light area of Kamathipura for urban construction purposes. The prostitutes who worked here, however, were dispersed to other places. For them, the place had changed, but the job remained unchanged, and there would be still no bright future for them.

Turbhe Tekdi

The Mumbai red light area in Turbhe has been a small lane, near the Turbhe Railway Station, much in the vicinity to a hilltop (Tekdi signifies hilltop). Basically, a slum area, Turbhe Tekdi, has been the go-to place for sex workers in Mumbai due to the ‘affordability’ factor. Due to the demolition of Kamatipura and the inflated prices, many women working as prostitutes have migrated here. Other sex workers have reached here by trafficking from Nepal, Bengal or other Indian states.

Turbhe Tekdi was established long after Kamathipura, when more and more people, including workers, laborers and craftsmen, moved here, and with the observed need for sexual desires, a pimp set up a brothel. There are less of pimps as compared to Kamathipura, but the sex workers here have a definite price. The precise location for the queue of women is the SP Lodge. Just after 8 p.m., as the night starts getting prominently darker, these sex workers can be found sitting near the railway station. Some return to Kamathipura at night in the pursuit of their ‘regular clients’ and move back to their residence in the morning.

Hanuman Tekdi

Much near Bhiwandi, Hanuman Tekdi is another Mumbai red light area towards Thane side. Not very popular, near a hillside, Hanuman Tekdi, is the home for thousands of sex workers. Much of the women here are from Mumbai, or as Turbhe Tekdi, subjected to trafficking from Bangladesh or Nepal or Kolkata by a business or by deceiving marriages.

While clients walk through the brothels in the areas mentioned, for picking an attractive woman, or even a regular visitors exploring these areas, they are at a high risk of theft. Therefore, it’s strongly recommended to not carry more cash or bank cards, as a safety measure even when one gets trapped. In addition, an area near the Thane Railway station has been found to have a group of women, who intrude some specific passers-by, touch the men slightly and extort money by complaining of sexual harassment to the police. More railway stations such as Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, Vile Parle (West) and Dahisar check-post have been suspected for the same with respect to sex workers.

Words in the End

Visitors to Mumbai would be well advised to curb their curiosity and pay special attention to safety if you do feel the urge to peek into these hidden areas. With glittering street lights, the pride in the smell of the sea and with a realm of glamour in itself, Mumbai, the city of dreams, speaks a lot more stories about women who have been deprived of their dreams pertaining to education, profession, and marriage due to money constraint, sex trafficking or various other reasons that lead them towards the ‘dark’ side of the city.