For decades, Mumbai knew its red light district. The narrow lanes of Kamathipura, its cramped rooms and brothels made sex work visible, concentrated and, for better or worse, impossible to ignore. Now that geography is disappearing.With the 34-acre redevelopment plan unveiled last week, Kamathipura is set to be remade with high rises, 500 sq ft homes and open spaces. But as the buildings that housed the city’s oldest red light district prepare to give way to a new neighbourhood, the women associated with it are already being pushed beyond its boundaries into hotels, lodges and scattered locations across the city’s fringes.For them, redevelopment is not simply about a new home. It is about where they will live, how they will earn, and whether anyone will still be able to find them when they need help.A 50-year-old sex worker who came from Kolkata two decades ago has spent most of her adult life in Kamathipura. Her two children were born and raised here. Yet as the neighbourhood prepares for its biggest transformation in decades, she says she has nowhere to go.“Now that there is a redevelopment plan, the government has not approached us and we have nowhere to go. There are no talks of shifts in occupation,” she said. In Kamathipura, Mumbai’s old red-light district, there’s a house that carries more history than brick and mortar usually do. It was once the address of Gangubai Kathiawadi, now transformed into a garment workshop. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)Regulated viceKamathipura was not always synonymous with sex work.The neighbourhood takes its name from the kamathis or Telugu speaking labourers from Hyderabad region who came to Bombay for construction work. Its association with sex work developed during the colonial period, when the British administration sought to regulate prostitution, partly to control venereal diseases among soldiers.Story continues below this adThe Contagious Diseases Act of 1868 brought women engaged in sex work under official surveillance. After Independence, the legal approach changed, with the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act of 1956, later amended as the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, focusing on trafficking, brothel keeping and exploitation.For decades, however, Kamathipura remained a concentrated ecosystem. Women, customers, middlemen and brothel keepers operated within a recognisable geography of narrow lanes and ageing buildings — a geography that is disappearing now.Ganesh Kosuri Maharaj, who was born and brought up in Kamathipura and works with sex workers, said the 14 Lal Bazaars once popularly known as the area’s “sex streets” have shrunk to five or six.“I am 40 years old now, I have seen this place since my birth… I have seen police raids and pimps exploiting women to engage in sexual activities… but now the situation has drastically changed,” he said. “The number of brothels have decreased. The women who continue to be exploited are now disintegrated into different places in Navi Mumbai, Thane and Palghar.”Story continues below this ad An inside view of a brothel in Kamathipura, also known as a “pinjra.” These are small, segregated spaces (seen on the right side of the room) where sex workers work. The common area as seen in the photo has a mirror on the wall for makeup, along with the workers’ bags hanging from the wall. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty)Priti Patkar, co-founder and director of Prerana, which has worked with women and children vulnerable to sexual exploitation and trafficking since 1986, said its research found 570 brothels in Kamathipura in 2011, while it was 404 in 2025.Former brothel premises are increasingly becoming ordinary commercial spaces, tailoring units, and leather shoe, cap and bag manufacturing units. “While conducting the survey, we visited various buildings that once had brothels and found out that new commercial units have been established,” Patkar said.The trade moves outThe decline of the traditional red light district does not mean the disappearance of exploitation.A Mumbai Police officer said the need for a fixed red light area has diminished. “See, the dynamics of space have changed. The number of sex workers, middlemen and customers is diminishing. Sex workers and customers no longer need a designated space; they can meet in hotel rooms.”Story continues below this adThat shift is particularly visible in Navi Mumbai, where police have been raiding hotels and lodges in Turbhe, Taloja, Kharghar, Panvel and surrounding areas.In 2022, Navi Mumbai Police registered 11 cases and rescued 28 women and five minor girls. In 2025, it registered 24 cases and rescued 107 women. Till July this year, police said they had registered 22 cases and rescued 70 women and five minor girls.Police say some women rescued in these operations had earlier worked in Kamathipura but did not live there because of its poor conditions.“During the investigation, the rescued women often tell us that they used to work in extremely small spaces in Kamathipura and other areas, the spaces used to stink,” a Navi Mumbai police official said. “Because of such conditions they never stayed in Kamathipura and just came there to earn a living. Now women who come here usually do not live here and come from other regions.”Story continues below this adFor NGOs like Prerana, the fragmentation of Kamathipura’s sex work community has created a different challenge: finding the women.“We can contact those women who are in our contact and have told us that they are currently based out of the city,” Patkar said.But increasingly, she does not know where the women have gone. “We are finding it difficult to contact women as we dont always know where the middlemen move them.”Kamathipura once provided a concentrated support network. Women and their children could access civic schools, municipal hospitals, counsellors and NGOs familiar with the community.Story continues below this adPatkar said that network had also helped children of sex workers remain in education. “Our years of work had ensured that their children had access to education. Now with many women moving to other districts, education has become expensive for them. Women are now getting into debts ensuring their children continue to get education, which in Mumbai was free till the 8th grade.”The final breakThe proposed redevelopment plan unveiled last week envisages around 24 highrises and rehabilitation homes of about 500 sq ft, compared with the roughly 120 sq ft homes many residents occupy now. More than 8,000 residential and commercial premises are proposed to be rehabilitated.Residents and landlords are to receive a minimum monthly rent of Rs 25,000 during construction, with two years paid in advance and another year by cheque. But sex workers face a particular vulnerability because many are tenants rather than owners.Filmmaker Dhaval Pitale, who is working on a documentary on Kamathipura, said landlords have increasingly replaced sex workers with other commercial tenants because of concerns over police raids.Story continues below this ad“Although they work in this area they do not own their small matchbox size houses as they pay the rent,” Pitale said. “The owners of the houses now feel that sex workers would attract police raids and hence they have started to rent out these small spaces to small business owners.”A 45-year-old sex worker sees tenant ownership as a possible way out of that insecurity. “There are talks that the ownership of the land will be given to the tenant and not the landlord,” she said. “If this is fulfilled by the government then we will have a house of our own, since we are the tenants we will get the ownership of the land according to the FSI and we will get some identity too.”Another resident, however, said the promise has not yet translated into certainty.“The CM has said that the ownership of land will belong to the tenant in South Mumbai,” she said. “Even though we have been promised the same we don’t know if the society will accept what we do. But we can rent the house and earn a house.”Story continues below this adFor the 50-year-old woman from Kolkata, the immediate concern is finding somewhere to go. “We will struggle to find any alternatives,” she said. “We have spent more than a decade and now if the redevelopment takes place, then we will have to shift somewhere else.”