MUMBAI: CNN International is set to enlighten viewers by taking a closer look at India’s tea industry. The channel will air a three part series titled The Price of Tea under its CNN Freedom Project starting from 14 March 2016. The show will be aired during CNN’s news streaming from 5:30 pm.
The series will see tea-workers living in squalor in crumbling mud huts, many with no access to education. ‘The Price of Tea’ sheds light on the workers struggling to survive, while others are being trafficked into the sex trade.
Trafficked for tea will take the viewers on a trek to Assam, India, a region that produces more tea than anywhere in the world to meet 18-year old Manju Gaur. She was just 14 when the traffickers came promising her a better life in the big city. With no education and making just pennies a day, she thought it would be a way to support her family. Instead, she saw young girls sexually assaulted by a ruthless trafficker, their money confiscated, and unable to leave. Manju managed to escape but now, she has another concern. Her 14-year old sister was still being held by traffickers.
The second part titled The Raid is a daring raid on an apartment complex, wherein the show embeds with local police on a mission to rescue Manju’s 14-year old sister being held for more than a year by an alleged trafficker. CNN confronts the alleged trafficker, a man with a history. As police apprehend him, they demand to know where Manju’s 14-year old sister has been working. Will there be a final, emotional reunion?
In the last segment Meet the Traffickers, the show ends by revealing the convicted trafficker who confesses to selling girls for as little as $200 (approx. Rs 13,000). He takes CNN to the railway station to show where he loaded girls on to the train and shipped them off to a life of domestic servitude and sometimes, worse.