Although slavery was outlawed nearly a century ago and the Kamaiya culture was made a criminal offence in 2009, the practice is so ingrained in the Tarai that it is still accepted. In most cases the parents of the girls themselves sell or rent their daughters to landlords in auctions to reduce the burden of having to take care of them. Shanta Chaudhary was one of them. At the age of eight, she was leased for Rs 7,000 a year by her parents who had nine other children and sent off to work in a family in Dang. She was homesick, had to work 19 hours a day, and live in the cowshed. When she made mistakes Shanta was rudely reprimanded by the landlord’s wife and sometimes beaten.
