Why would women "rescued" from the sex trade riot against their rescuers? Sex workers in Hyderabad often experience rescue as a form of humanitarian violence befitting the United Nation's definition of trafficking. Anti-trafficking laws in India reinforce kinship structures that precipitate the need to participate in sex work. Moreover, without restructuring the wider political economy of female labour, rehabilitation efforts fail to address sex workers' economic needs. Those rescued almost inevitably choose to return to sex work. Anti-trafficking programmes do violence to sex workers while failing to offer them adequate alternatives.