Trafficked by husband into India for Tk 40k

Two years ago, when she was 18, Tania (not her real name) married Jahidul Islam Rony, 27, a conductor of a city bus.

Their days were passing well until she discovered that her husband was a drug addict and irregular in his job.

Following ups and downs in their conjugal life, Rony one day told Tania that he was trying to manage a job for her in India with a monthly salary of Tk 30,000. He also said the job would change her luck and she believed it.

Rony then took Tania to a "madam", a trafficker, in the capital's Hatirjheel area who tricked her into going to India, promising her a job at an old age home in Chennai. Reaching there, Tania discovered that her husband had sold her to a sex trafficking racket for Tk 40,000.

Luckily, the 20-year-old recently escaped from Chennai, returned to Dhaka after four months, and filed a case against nine people, including her husband, with Hatirjheel Police Station under the human trafficking act.

She is one of three victims who fled India and returned home recently.

In the case statement, she described a horrid tale of falling prey to human trafficking and being physically, sexually assaulted and raped in the foreign land.

Tania said she and her husband used to live in a rented house in Demra's Kajla.

On January 2 this year, Rony brought Tania to one "Nodi Madam" in Hatirjheel area and introduced her as a "lady officer" of the old age home in Chennai, which is recruiting nurses. She told her that she would go to India on January 6 and if she wanted the job, she had to go with her.

On the evening of January 6, Tania, Nodi along with another girl, who too aspired to work in India, started their journey from Kalyanpur bus stand. The next morning, they reached a house near Satkhira border, a transit point for human trafficking.

There, Tania saw five-six other girls waiting to cross the border. Around 11:00pm, six of them crossed the border. Five hands were changed to reach a West Bengal house. To get there, they had to walk for six hours.

After 30-40 minutes, a man came with a camera to take their photos to make Indian National Identification Card. At night, they were given Aadhaar cards along with flight tickets to Chennai, reads the statement.

The following morning, Tania was taken to Chennai by air and kept at a house in Pakkam area where she found four-five more girls. After two days, Tania was shifted to another house where two members of the racket named Beauty and Azharul kept the girls under watch.

"The next day, Beauty and Azharul told me that a guest would visit my room and that I should get ready. I could sense what was going to happen with me …," she said in the case statement, adding that when she wanted to contact Nodi, they stripped her naked, filmed the scene and threatened her to act accordingly.

"They told me that my husband sold me to Nodi for Tk 40,000 and Nodi resold me to them for Tk 70,000," she said in the statement.

There, Tania sought help from a client, hailing from Kolkata, who gave her Tk 20,000. On May 3, when she was sent to a massage parlour for prostitution for 10 days, she fled the place on the first day by breaking a glass of the window. She got a train from Chennai and reached Kolkata.

On May 10, she was able to return to Bangladesh through Satkhira border.

Earlier, an 18-year-old woman, who was trafficked to India, fled Bengaluru on May 7 and lodged a case with Hatirjheel Police Station on June 1 against 12 members of the gang, including Rifadul Islam Ridoy, 26, also known as Ridoy Babo on TikTok, a popular video-sharing app.

Police are also investigating whether Ridoy's racket has any connections with Tania's trafficking to Chennai.

"We are looking for the husband and trying to trace other members of the gang," Hafiz Al Faruk, additional deputy commissioner (Tejgaon division) of Dhaka Metropolitan Police, told The Daily Star.