Biography

Sunitha Krisha

Sunitha Krishnan is an activist, author and film producer. She has founded Prajwala – Asia’s largest institution combating sex trafficking and sex crime. Since its inception in 1996 at Hyderabad, Sunitha has assisted in the rescue of more than 28,600 young girls and women across 12 countries and has prevented 15,600 children from being inducted into prostitution.

Recipient of the fourth highest Indian Civilian Honor- Padma Shri, and recognized as 150 “Fearless Women in the World’ by Newsweek, Sunitha envisions a world free of sex trafficking and sex crime and has galvanised her vision by confronting traffickers, supporting survivors and developing innovative models of prevention to disrupt the cycle of inter-generational exploitation. She spearheaded the first ever survivor led campaign – Swaraksha, against Sex Trafficking which directly reached out to over 1 million people and launched the #MenAgainstDemand campaign with the slogan & Real Men Don’t Buy Sex" which has reached 1.8 billion people worldwide. The therapeutic community through safe shelter homes established by Ms. Krishnan for sex trafficked women and children are considered as best practice model in the world. In 2015, Sunitha launched #ShameTheRapist campaign which resulted in the Supreme Court of India to form a committee to block rape videos online and the Ministry of Home Affairs setting up the first ever cyber-crime portal to report violent sexually abusive online content. Ms. Krishnan’s relentless fight in the Supreme Court for nearly two decades resulted in a path-breaking direction to bring a comprehensive legislation to combat human trafficking in India.