Janak Raj Sapkota

Janakraj Sapkota/Kathmandu 

Sept 25, 2017

In the past four months alone, Central Investigation Bureau (CIB) of Nepal Police rescued 81 women trafficking victims from India and other countries. However, police could neither identify the agents involved in the human trade nor arrest any suspects. The reason: none of the victims filed cases against their traffickers.

Through various contacts and sources, the CIB receives information on Nepali women trafficking victims who ended up stranded in various streets of Indian cities. After the information is verified, the CIB begins their effort to rescue the victims and bring them back to Nepal. However, the victims choose not to file cases against anyone, which leads to abrupt end the CIB’s investigation without any conclusion.

In one instance on May 4, the CIB rescued 44 women returned by Immigration check post in Dubai. The unsuspecting women had first reached Delhi of India from Nepal and took a flight to Dubai, believing that they were headed for Kuwait for domestic work. Police later concluded that traffickers had intended to take them to Kuwait through illegal route.

Each of the women had paid their ‘agents’ Rs 100,000 to Rs 150,000 to land foreign employment in Kuwait. Despite being cheated and nearly sold as slaves, all of the women decided to keep it quiet. They neither took name of their agent nor filed any complaint.

As a result, the CIB could not continue their investigation on human trafficking case of such a large scale. None of those involved in the crime were arrested. It limited the CIB’s work to only rescue without ability to investigate. However, such incident is nothing new for the CIB.

On May 16, the CIB rescued 24 Nepali women from Om Bihar of India with help from New Delhi-based Nepali embassy and Crime Branch of Indian Police. Those women had fallen victims of human traffickers who were preparing to take them to Kuwait for ‘domestic works’.

The Nepali women were left stranded in Delhi for months before being rescued. Although it is expected of them to be enraged against their fraudulent agents, all of the women chose not to file formal complaint against them. Again in lack of complaints, the CIB again could not take their investigation further.

In another case, the CIB rescued five Nepali women from New Delhi with the help of an NGO Maiti India and brought them back to Nepal on July 31. They too were promised lucrative jobs in Kuwait and taken to the Indian capital from Nepal. This time too, the CIB could not carry out their investigation for the same reason.

Likewise on August 11, the bureau rescued 11 Nepali women who were bound for Syria from India via Dubai. Nepali workers are prohibited to work in Syria due to its heated internal conflicts. However, a chain of human traffickers had arranged to take those women in Syria to fulfill the country’s demand for domestic workers.

Surprisingly, only two of the victims came in contact with the CIB after the rescue. But none of them filed complaint against their agents. They also did not support the CIB to investigate the agents that nearly sold them to slavery.

Among the women who were rescued from New Delhi on July 31, one woman from Jhapa district was a mother of two children. She had become fed up with her alcoholic husband who abused and beat her up after being drunk. Tired of living that way, she had come in contact with an agent who convinced her that she can make a lot of money working in Kuwait.

After being rescued, the woman not only refused to file case against her agent, she also vented her rage against the CIB for spoiling her foreign dream. According to Meera Chaudhary, spokesperson of the CIB, only a few rescued victims file cases against their agents. She said the human trafficking is flourishing in lack of formal complaints.

Most of the victims end up contacting human traffickers through their own relatives or their acquaintances. Despite being rescued from foreign country in the mouth of being trafficked, they still hold strong determination to work in foreign country.

“Dreams of women who have faced severe financial crunch or domestic violence are woven with big promises of agents in such a way that they do not dare to file cases against their agents even though they turn out fraudulent and had intended to sell them,” said Chaudhary, adding that it is the lack of contact and co-operation the victims that makes it difficult to take action against human trafficking network.

Note: This reporting is originally published in Nepali language in Kantipur daily (https://www.kantipurdaily.com/news/2017/09/25/20170925064105.html)