2006 – 2019 — on foot, across states
The Marches
Four marches, each carrying a different cause across state lines — from a single state in Haryana to a 16,000 km route through ten states.
A 300-kilometre march across Haryana confronting the state's severely skewed sex ratio and the practice of female feticide — carrying the issue directly into the communities where the demographic imbalance was most acute, and where its downstream consequence, bride trafficking into the state, would later become central to Khan's work.
The community came together to stand up against bride trafficking — about 750 community groups formed, with more than 5,000 members. Religious leaders joined the effort too: Imams took part in a motorbike rally and raised the plight of survivors in mosque meetings, broadening the march's reach into faith communities along the route.
Assam, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh — 70 districts in all. More than 1,000 schools, colleges and institutions and 2,000 bazaars and haats were visited, and networks were built with service providers and volunteers along a route used by traffickers to move girls across India's borders with Myanmar, Nepal, Bhutan and Bangladesh — a corridor responsible for more than 60% of human trafficking in India. A helpline was launched in Assamese, Bangla, Hindi and English to support stakeholders handling trafficking cases.
Organised under the National Alliance for Peace and Justice, the "Paidal" (on-foot) march was billed to mobilise 15,000 people from across Jharkhand; close to 10,000 — children, women, men and senior citizens from tribal communities across 20 districts — walked from Columbus Ground in Hazaribagh to Raj Bhavan in Ranchi between 20 and 27 February 2019, to demand full rights for tribal communities over forest land, water and resources under the Forest Rights Act, 2006.
"Our forefathers have struggled to preserve the land and the forest resources. But now the government refuses to give us that very land — instead they have added it to the land bank. Our demand is that we are given rights to the land." — a marcher from Hazaribagh
A day into the march, the Supreme Court ordered the eviction of forest dwellers nationwide; the charter of demands was updated to include a petition against that order. Core demands included:
On 28 February, Adivasi leaders — accompanied by former MLA Gautam Sagar Rana and Birendra Kumar — met Jharkhand Governor Droupadi Murmu and submitted their memorandum. She committed to raising the matter with the central government and the state's Forest Minister.
Each march has served a dual purpose: raising public and institutional awareness of a specific injustice, and physically reaching the villages, transit points, and destination communities where prevention and support work has to happen. Walking the same routes that trafficking or displacement follow keeps the advocacy grounded in the geography of the problem itself, rather than confined to conference rooms and press conferences.
