A protest in Delhi on Monday against the trafficking of Nepalese children. (Reuters)

Lucknow, June 22: When 14-year-old Neeta Lama sneaked out a letter to her parents in Nepal, it set off a chain of events that freed 30 girls from a circus in Uttar Pradesh and brought out harrowing tales of sex slavery.

Neeta’s father, Hari Bahadur, was approached in 2002 by an agent who offered Rs 100 a day — double of what most families in their village at Makawanpur in Nepal earn — if their daughter went to work for a circus.

“We were given Rs 5,000 in advance in 2002 and promised that after one year, they would send Rs 100 a day. But this never reached us,” said Bahadur. Attempts by the family to meet Neeta were also rebuffed.

Then the letter arrived, detailing how the girl was being tortured at the Great Roman Circus in Gonda, 100 km from here. The family rushed to local social activists for help and Bachpan Bachao Andolan, an NGO that specialises in defending children’s rights, was alerted. A complaint was made to the Gonda district magistrate, but no action was taken.

On the morning of June 15, parents of 11 girls, along with social activists and journalists stormed the circus tent in Gonda in the presence of policemen and district officials. Fifty-one girls were herded out, of whom 30 were minor — all from Nepal.

Neeta broke down on seeing her parents. “After the day’s rehearsals, we used to be called to a owners’ camp and raped. We were advised to take pills to avert pregnancy,” she told police.

Kalpana, another girl who was rescued, said: “The circus owners used to torture us for more work and served us inadequate food. The salary never reached our parents. Minor boys faced similar torture.”

One of the circus owners, Reza Khan, has been arrested on charges of sexual exploitation.

Nursing his bandaged head a week after the violent rescue operation in which seven persons were assaulted by circus goons, Kailash Satyarthi of the South Asian Coalition on Child Servitude is on hunger strike outside the Uttar Pradesh Assembly. The reason: none of the girls has been allowed to go home and, possibly, 11 of the youngest have gone missing.

The girls are still in the circus tent that has been sealed off by the police. Additional district magistrate M.A. Khan said a magisterial probe is on and the administration is trying to verify the addresses of the girls from Nepal. “The task of repatriation would involve an exercise through the ministry of home and external affairs.”

Meanwhile, some of the 51 girls sided with the circus owners and the sub-divisional administration, who the NGOs have accused of being hand in glove with the circus owners, refused to start a case under labour laws. State minister for labour Kaushal Kishore had to step in and order that a case be registered.

The social activists and parents are complaining that 11 of the girls — between 8 and 10 —cannot be found. A police officer denied this, saying: “We are not aware of 11 girls. All the 30 girls are there in the tent.”

Satyarthi is not convinced. “We are shocked that the victims are still detained in the circus tent and 11 minor girls, whose parents had come to take them back, are untraced,” he says.

Captain Khen Thapa, whose organisation Nepal Child Welfare Foundation has done an undercover survey of trafficking of girls from Nepal’s villages to India’s circuses, sits grim-faced.

According to Thapa’s survey, circus agents target Makawanpur and Morang, bordering Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Most families have no land and don’t earn more than Rs 50 a day.

“About 1,000 Nepali girls work in 30 circus companies. But double the number has been trafficked into this country in 20 years. When girls go missing, the circus companies wash their hands of them. They change the name of the circus to avoid legal responsibilities,” says an activist of Maiti Nepal, an NGO campaigning against girl trafficking.