During his time as a circus ringmaster Bhim Lama worked with dancing tigers. But his colleague, Ganesh Shrestha, provoked laughter around the dinner table when he was asked if he had also trained big cats.
'No,' he said. 'Little girls.'
Now these two poachers have turned into gamekeepers by embarking on a new career: finding and releasing trafficked children who work as slaves in Indian circuses. As the rescue team of a British charity, the Esther Benjamins Trust, they have freed more than 200 child acrobats.
The danger of their work and the tragedy behind the trade was revealed recently when the pair travelled with their team and 12 parents to a town in northern India to rescue a group of girls trapped in the notoriously abusive New Raj Kamal Circus.
The information they had received indicated that the children were being subjected to regular sexual abuse as well as being forced into dangerous work in harsh conditions. They were also told the circus owner had links to local gangsters and the police.
'There is a danger of being killed,' Mr Shrestha said casually.
