Thousands of children are bought and sold in India every day, far from the gaze of British tabloids — and for a lot less than £200,000.

Take the case of Monisha, 11, whom The Times met last year. When she was 7 her impoverished father sold her for about £150 and she became one of the estimated 15 million child slaves in India.

Monisha works for 12 hours every day in a dark, filthy fabric factory in Salem, an industrial city in the state of Tamil Nadu. She cleans looms that produce the inexpensive yarn often used to produce cheap garments for British high streets. “I have bad headaches all the time,” she said. “The noise never stops.”

Monisha can leave only if she repays a “loan” for £150, which her father borrowed from her employer. The interest charges exceed the wages, so she will never be able to repay it.

Human Rights Watch has estimated that 15 million children have changed hands in India. Last year a US State Department report said: “India is a source, destination and transit country for men, women and children trafficked for the purposes of forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation.”

The report noted that the Government ran advertisements against trafficking but did not have an agency to police it.

As many as 500 Nepalese children were sold into slavery to Indian circuses in the past year, according to a report by the Himalayan state. The Nepalese girls are prized by circus owners and prostitution rackets for their fair skin. Activists said that some were sold for as little as £10.

Times Recommends

• Twitter in trouble over Sarkozy affairs rumour
• North Koreans fear another devastating famine
• Want to be a genius? Practise, says geneticist