Young Ganga is tricked by her boyfriend with the promise of a film career and persuaded to leave the countryside for Mumbai. Once there, she is sold to a brothel in Kamathipura – India’s main red-light district in the 1950s – where her resistance is broken and she is coerced into servicing clients. But Ganga’s rebellious spirit endures. She may have no choice but to accept her circumstances but she can at least bend them in her favour. She becomes the feared Gangubai, champion of prostitutes who, allied with the neighbourhood Mafiosi boss, will be the first woman to raise her voice to advocate for the rights of sex workers’ and their children. Her path of emancipation and courage in a profoundly chauvinistic and narrow-minded society leads to an encounter with Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of independent India.