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Walking on Garstin Bastion Road (known as G B Road in local parlance despite having been rechristened over five decades back), near New Delhi Railway Station, can be quite an embarrassment as there is always a crowd of people ogling lustily at half-clad, heavily made-up women peering down from enclosed balconies of their two-storied structures.

There is a constant exchange of lewd and suggestive gestures between the two sides. There are also times when burly policemen can be seen chasing hordes of crowds away from the corridor which leads to the rickety paint-peeled structures. There are people talking animatedly to unkempt characters in the corridor.

Welcome to the oldest red light area of the Indian capital, set up during Mughal rule some centuries ago, where, according to Khairati Lal Bhola, president of Bharatiya Patita Udhar Sabha (BPUS), an NGO working for welfare of sex workers and their children, over 4,000 sex workers operate through day and night. There are over 100 brothels out of which 92 are still operating. The rest closed down due to some run-in with the law enforcement agencies or the courts.