A minor Bangladeshi girl, who was rescued from the Howrah-Ahmedabad Express train on Wednesday by RPF at Rourkela while being trafficked by two brokers to a brothel, has finally returned to her parents, thanks to the efforts of the Disha-Childline and its director AK Azad.
Source said Afroza laskar (15) of Anandnagar village under the Salikha police station of Magura district in Bangladesh was noticed crying and scared by co-passengers of the train. Though she was not able to speak anything, the co-passengers handed her over to the RPF along with two other persons, Ruhel Amin and Tania, who were carrying her. The RPF handed over them to GRP, Rourkela.
As the girl was too scared to reveal anything to the police, the cops called the Disha-Childline team and handed her over to it for counselling.
But surprisingly, police allowed the brokers to go away. The police pretended that actually the girl does not belong to Bangladesh and the matter was fabricated by the Childline and social activists.
During counselling, it was known that the girl belongs to a poor family, and taking advantage of this Ruhel and Tania assuring a job to her at a textile factory in Gujarat on a monthly salary of Rs 10,000 managed to bring her to Howrah by waterway and road without any passport. And from there, they were carrying her in the Howrah-Ahmedabad Express.
During the journey, the girl heard that the brokers were taking her to sell in a brothel in Gujarat. So, she started crying for help.
According to many, it was a question of the security system in India as a teenage girl and two others managed to come from Bangladesh to Rourkela without any hindrance.
Basing on the statement of the girl, the Disha-Childline authorities talked to her family members, the Collector of Magura and the Bangladesh High Commissioner for her repatriation to Bangladesh as the girl had no passport. Even the Childline was busy writing letters to the district administration and the State ad Union Governments to make arrangement for her repatriation. But it yielded no result.
The Childline then wrote letters to a number of NGOs working in Bangladesh and to the International Justice & Care organisation. The International Justice and Care organisation intervened in the matter and kept persuading both the India and Bangladesh Governments to respond to the situation.
Finally, the Government of India issued the girl’s transit visa. Accordingly, on Wednesday night, the Childline team and local police took her to the Petrapole boarder and handed over to the BSF IG on Thursday. And the BSF handed over her to Bangladesh officials, and she finally returned to her family.
Overjoyed for return to her parents after 11 months, Afroza said she had come out of her home to earn money for treatment of herself and her father. With the help of the Disha-Childline and its director Azad, she underwent an operation and got cured. That is her biggest achievement in these 11 months.
She also informed that many girls of her locality were trafficked by these brokers with a lure of good jobs. If the GRP could have interrogated the two then many facts could have been revealed.