In 2005, following the work he produced for Moksha on the different forms of widowhood to which some women in India are subjected, Fazal Sheikh began an extensive investigation into the broader situation of women in contemporary India. The result of this work was the book Ladli—“beloved daughter” in Hindi—published by Steidl in 2007, which documents some of the innumerable discriminatory practices suffered by women in India from childhood to old age.

In order to offer a more ample perspective on the polyhedral and transversal discrimination being perpetrated, while paying attention to the singularities of each of the girls and the women who are subject to it, Sheikh carried out an extensive documentation process. Thus, the author visited orphanages, hospitals, schools, and shelters, and spoke with women, homeless girls, and prostitutes who had suffered abuse, as well as with some of the leaders in the struggle against the patriarchal violence in Indian society. In contrast to the miscellaneous nature of the images and the broad range of materials presented in Moksha, the narrative load in Ladli was carried almost exclusively by portraits that make up an ensemble of beautiful and fully singular faces which contrast with the terrible testimonies of dehumanization that accompany them.