• Source: Garstin Bastion Road, New Delhi

G.B. Road, Garstin Bastion Road, (officially changed to Swami Shradhanand Marg in 1966) is a road running from Ajmeri Gate to Lahori Gate in Delhi, India. It is a large red-light district. It has several hundred multi-storey brothels and there are estimated to be over 1,000 sex workers. It is lined with two or three-storey buildings that have shops on ground floor. About twenty of these buildings have about 100 brothels on the first floor that open at night after the shops at ground level close. It is the biggest red light area in Delhi.




History



The old city of Delhi, Shahjahanabad, was surrounded by a wall. The wall had many gates and bastions. A bastion is an angular structure projecting outward from the curtain wall of an artillery fortification. It is called "Burj" in Arabic and Urdu. One such burj or bastion was named after a British officer of East India Company. The history of G.B. Road can be dated back to Mughal era. It is said that there were five red light areas or kothas (brothels) in Delhi at that time. Then came the British Raj, when a British commissioner Garstin Bastion consolidated all the five kothas in one area on this road. The road has about 100 brothels now. G.B Road has one of the few red light areas in India apart from Kamathipura (Mumbai), Sonagachi (Kolkata) and Chaturbhuj Sthan (Muzaffarpur). The place also contains thousands of prostitution rooms or kothas.




Market


The road is famous as a market for machinery, automobile parts, hardware and tools and is the largest market for these items in the National Capital Region. The road is crowded with vehicles and persons during the day as it is a commercial area.
The segment of the road starting from the Ajmeri Gate in the south until the small intersection with a street leading up to Farash Khana in the north has shops on the ground floor and kothas or brothels on the first and second floors.
The streets and houses at the back of the road are residential areas.




Crime


At night, the road is a dangerous place for the uninitiated. Mugging, snatching of wallets, watches and phones and other crimes happen quite often. A policeman on duty was stabbed to death by muggers just after midnight in September 2012 when a posse of policemen tried to save a man from a gang of criminals who had waylaid him on the road and stabbed him while he was going home from work.




See also



Prostitution in India
Prostitution in Asia
Prostitution in Kolkata
Prostitution in Mumbai
All Bengal Women's Union
Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee
Male prostitution




Bibliography


Soofi, Mayank Austen (2013). Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi's Red Light District. Penguin Group. ISBN 978-0-670-08414-2.




References






External links


The inner life of GB Road, Yahoo India, 23 July 2008
Nobody Can Love You More: Life in Delhi's Red Light District - Mayank Austen Soofi
Safety before visit GB road Archived 5 December 2019 at the Wayback Machine

Kata Kunci Pencarian:

• Garstin Bastion Road, New Delhi
• Sonagachi
• Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh
• List of eponymous roads in Delhi
• Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee
• Prajwala
• Sanlaap
• All Bengal Women's Union
• List of red-light districts