Thirteen girls and a woman, all of them from Bengal, were rescued from West Champaran district in Bihar between the night of February 20 and the morning of February 21, police said.
The 13 girls, who should have been in school, were part of different orchestras, said police and child rights activists. Trafficked from Bengal, the girls were allegedly forced to dance at soirees and sexually exploited, they said.
The raids were conducted in different areas in Bettiah, the administrative headquarters of West Champaran, and bordering Nepal. Two girls from Nepal were also rescued, the police said.
“In total, 16 people have been rescued. One of them is an adult. The rest are all minors. Ten men were detained. Three of them got bail from the court. The remaining seven have been sent to jail. They have been charged with trafficking and under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (Pocso) Act. A probe is underway and we hope to make more arrests in the case,” Vivek Deep, SDPO, Bettiah Sadar, told Metro.
A purported clip that records the statement of one of the girls after the rescue was shared with this newspaper by an NGO that helped the police in the raid.
In the clip, the girl introduces herself as a resident of “Burdwan in Bengal”. She alleges that her parents “sold her and her sister”.
She accuses a man in Bihar of raping her. She says she became pregnant and had to have an abortion.
This newspaper could not verify the authenticity of the video.
A couple of NGOs that work to combat human trafficking helped the police in the raid last week.
“We had been getting information from local sources about several minors being confined and tormented at different places in Bettiah. We approached the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights and the National Human Rights Commission. Both the agencies directed Bihar Police to do the needful,” said Virender Singh of Mission Mukti Foundation.
The Bengal-based Rescue and Relief Foundation also helped in the operation.
The arrests were made from areas under the jurisdiction of three police stations — Nautan, Bairia and Jagdishpur.
The survivors from Bengal hail from districts like Nadia, South 24-Parganas, East
and West Burdwan, the police said.
“The girls have been shifted to a shelter home. Once they have recorded their statements in front of a magistrate, they will be handed over to the Child Welfare Committee for rehabilitation,” said an officer.
Singh of Mukti Foundation said the youngest among the minors rescued was 12 years old and the eldest was 17.
“They had been confined for different periods, from four years to two months,” Singh said.