Imphal, April 26: The number of young women in Manipur getting into the habit of drugs are on the rise.

Many of them have also been caught in a vicious circle wherein even if they want to kick the habit and lead a normal life, lack of co-operation and discrimination from family members and friends forced them to become drug dependent all the more.

In such a situation, it is no wonder that some of them are working as commercial sex workers to earn money for buying drugs.

28-year old Roji (name changed), a commercial sex worker and a HIV positive, started taking SP tablets, when she was just 17 years.

Coming from a middle class family, Roji grew up under the watchful eyes of her parents who were sometimes unreasonably so strict that she wanted to break free from what she felt that time as' shackles of life' and got befriended with a young boy of her age.

Her boyfriend was in the habit of taking drugs and she got the first taste of drug from her boyfriend too.

After getting along 'nicely' for some time without the knowledge of the family members and college friends, her boyfriend started neglecting Roji and ultimately went out of her life.

Recounting that phase of her life, Roji said she was 'shattered' and started taking more drugs and became a compulsive liar just to extract money from her parents to keep alive her drug habit.

She also slowly drifted away from her college friends and family members.

When she realised about her miserable life, Roji took a firm resolution of staying away from drug.

Unfortunately, none of her family members believed her and that made her all the more depressed.

Unable to bear the sneering remarks from her family members and discriminating attitude of her friends and relatives, Roji once again started taking drugs.

With pharmaceutical substances like SP and N-10 becoming too mild for the 'kicks', Roji finally started injecting No.4 and got into the company of different types of people.

In order to get money to buy the powdery intoxicant, Roji got into the flesh trade and became a commercial sex worker.

It was also through trading of her body that she was infected with HIV.

On the other hand, when she was just 19 years old, Bina (name changed) was married off by parents to a 27-year old man.

After three months of marriage, her husband, a truck driver by profession, started ill-treating and kept himself away from having physical contact with her.

Sometime her husband did not return home for days and when at home he was always drunk and quarrelled with her.

Her feminine aspiration of becoming a mother to a child even after one and half year of wedlock was out of the question.

At such a critical juncture of life, a neighbouring young man, who understood the predicament of Bina started befriendly her.

The young man was in the habit of drug and one day he offered some SP tablets to Bina.

Deluge with the kind of existence, one day Bina decided to put an end to her life and took around 30 SP and N-10 tablets together.

Bina was rushed to the Hospital and her in-laws came to know about her dependence on drug from this incident.

Subsequently, her mother-in-laws chased her out of the house.

Instead of going to back to her natal home, Bina went to a distant place outside Manipur.

There she did various odds to earn her livelihood.

While working in a hostel, one day police conducted a raid and she was arrested.

In the police custody, she was harassed a lot.

After coming out from the custody of the police, no one was willing to employed Bina in 'honest works'.

With no money in the pocket and the an hungry stomach, Bina started living in the company of rich moneyed businessmen.

She also started taking drugs.

After some years, she returned to Imphal where she was introduced to No-4 and started working as a commercial sex worker.

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