No relatives or friends turn-ed up to receive Nanjamma when she was released after 14 years from a southern Indian prison. However, the Hindu woman found a Catholic nun waiting for her at the prison gate, ready to take her to a rehabilitation center.
“If the sister had not come to receive me, I do not know where I would have been today,” said Nanjamma, who in April came to Jeevodaya Ashram a center for women in distress located in the suburbs of Bengaluru. (Nanjamma requested that her name be changed.)
Sr. Clara Alappat founded the center 27 years ago to shelter and rehabilitate women who are released from prisons, and girls who are rescued from sex rackets.