Escaping the Organ Harvesters

Girls in India are rescued and put in a safe home

Kalyani was a street child, forging her own life on the fringes of her village. She happily played with other children under an ancient tamarind tree, eating the fruit that grew in its heavy branches. When it wasn’t in season, Kalyani asked the villagers for food, and they kindly offered her whatever they could spare. Like many homeless children in the area, Kalyani slept under a nearby bridge at night.

One night, she woke to the feeling of someone pulling off her clothes. Kalyani struggled awake with a cold rush of fear and shock. A group of strange men stood in front of her. The ground and surrounding was unfamiliar. She wasn’t under the bridge.  Disoriented, Kalyani silently tried to take in everything about the strange room she was suddenly in with these strangers.

A phone rang. They conferred, then left. The door’s lock clicked.

Kalyani began to weep. Then she began to shout for help. No one answered, and the hours stretched. She had no idea how long she was in that room. Hunger cramped her stomach, and she began to feel weak.

Suddenly, the men returned and dragged Kalyani out of the room into another full of other captives. There were 25 girls, some as old as 20 years old and others as little as 3, crying and clutching at the older girls.

Every evening, the men would return and take out a girl.

In the morning, she would be returned to the room with burns, marks, and scratches on her body.

Some mornings, no one returned. The older girls murmured that they were being sold off and used by doctors at the local hospitals. Kalyani could hardly understand all of this, but she was frightened. The number of girls slowly fell to 17. One of the older girls came back bleeding, and she collapsed, only to later stop breathing. The men were upset about this. They immediately took all the girls out, brought them to a different place, and took individual photographs of them all. Kalyani recalled, “I overheard them talking about eyes, kidneys, and B positive. These were English words I didn’t understand.”

Abruptly one morning, the men woke them all and forced them to brush their teeth. They gave the girls breakfast. One man announced, “You are going to have a new owner. You must do everything the owner asks you to do.”

All of this frightened Kalyani deeply. “We thought our lives were going to end badly.”

Finally, they were all herded to a temple to meet their new owner.

He was a fair-skinned man and had a vehicle to transport the girls away. “For the first time in my life, I touched a car,” Kalyani said. The entire experience was surreal. They were whisked away from the temple and taken to a restaurant where they were given food and new clothes. The adults told them that they were free and were going to a safe home.

The home was part of a church, and Kalyani heard her first Christian song. “That day, we didn’t even know who Jesus was,” she said. “God brought us from a dark room, and he gave us a father, mother, many sisters, and a big family... Today, we are all children of God. Jesus Christ is our personal savior. Not only that, but I am a princess of this earth because my Heavenly Father owns it. I praise God for everything he is doing in our lives!”

World Challenge’s partners firmly believe that God’s presence and healing power is the truest way to help these girls recover from the trauma and horror of their experiences.

“When we pray for them,” our team member told us, “we ask Jesus to come and meet them. Already in their young lives, they have seen horrors. He is the only one who can heal their hearts. We pray and raise our hands over their heads, and—I wish you could see it—their heads go back, and you can see a radiance come over their faces. Jesus meets them. They feel his presence. Jesus has such grace with these children. You can see how much he loves them.” 

For Kalyani, she has begun schooling and has begun to dream of a future she might’ve never contemplated before for herself.

“I want to study well, and when I grow up, I just want to share the gospel with as many people as I can and do my best to reduce people being sold for organ harvesting… I will study hard and make you all proud of me. Thank you so much for this wonderful opportunity!”