Lindsay Lohan's India visit: What happened during her 2009 documentary on child trafficking

Lindsay Lohan has never shied away from talking about the week that took her far outside the world of Hollywood - a 2009 trip to India where she filmed a documentary on child trafficking. Looking back on the experience years later, the actress didn't mince words about its impact on her.

Lindsay Lohan spent a week in Delhi, Kolkata, and beyond

Lindsay's connection to the project began when she met British filmmaker Maninderpal Sahota at a social event and expressed interest in getting involved. That conversation eventually became Lindsay Lohan's Indian Journey, an hour-long documentary that had her spending about a week in December 2009 filming with an international broadcast company across Delhi, Kolkata, and a village in West Bengal.

The documentary followed the actress as she sat down with survivors of trafficking, a former trafficker, and parents whose children had been sent away to work or had been exploited. She also visited the Sanlaap women's and children's shelter in Kolkata, where girls rescued from brothels used dance as part of their recovery process.

The controversy surrounding Lindsay Lohan's India documentary

Just a day into filming, Lindsay posted on social media that dozens of children had been rescued in a single raid. Indian anti-trafficking group Bachpan Bachao Andolan quickly disputed that claim, saying she hadn't actually taken part and threatening legal action over the post.

Reports at the time also suggested the global broadcasting company hadn't arranged proper work-visa paperwork for her, putting her at risk of an immigration blacklist, and she reportedly missed a scheduled sit-down with a UNICEF representative planned for the film. British commentators openly questioned whether the broadcaster's decision to feature Lohan — amid her own widely reported legal troubles at the time — was more about generating headlines than raising awareness.

Despite the noise around the documentary's release, the actress' own description of the trip has stayed fairly consistent over the years: difficult, humbling, and impossible to forget. Speaking to reporters in 2013 while promoting Scary Movie 5, she called the India trip an experience she'd never forget, and said that meeting the trafficked children she met gave her a way to bring attention to their situation — even as she admitted, plainly, that it had left her shocked and sad.

She's revisited the memory since. In 2017, around Diwali, Lohan shared a photo of her cradling a child, a bindi on her forehead from the trip on Instagram. She said that trip has stayed with her long after the cameras stopped rolling.

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