Islampur (Bengal), Feb. 7: A 19-year-old girl from Bihar was rescued from a brothel in Panjipara here yesterday, almost two years after she was sold to prostitution racketeers allegedly by her uncle.
The girl’s family came to know about her whereabouts through a “sympathetic” customer to whom she had given her address. The girl was rescued by police with the help of an NGO.
The victim, who hails from Nahata in Saharsa district, has told the police that she had been enticed from her home by uncle Dinesh Shaw during Holi celebrations in 2009 with the promise of taking her to his parents-in-law’s house in Arotha, also in Bihar.
“But he sold me off to a man, who took me to a house of ill repute in Panjipara. I have been living a life of extreme hardship and enduring all kinds of cruelty ever since I landed up there. Today, I was told by the police that my father had died one year ago. I am shocked at this. I want to return to my mother as soon as possible,” said the girl.
The girl’s father was an electrician and Dinesh is his brother. She has two brothers and a sister, all younger than her.
The 19-year-old said Dinesh had asked her to accompany him in a car to Arotha to spend a good time at his parents-in-law’s house. “He had hired a car. My aunt (Dinesh’s wife) and some other men were also in the vehicle. Uncle told me that the men were his parents-in-law’s relatives. I refused to get off the car when I was taken to a house in Panjipara. I was beaten up and forced to enter the house,” she recalled. Panjipara is 25km from here.
Sources said the girl’s mother had filed a missing person’s report with the Nahata police station, and Dinesh and his wife had been absconding since then.
The girl said she had managed to give her home address and the names of her parents to a “sympathetic” customer about a year back. He contacted her mother, who in turn approached the police. A Patna-based anti-trafficking NGO, Bipin Behari, was engaged to trace the girl.
The police said the NGO had chanced upon the girl recently at the Panjipara brothel and contacted the Nahata police on Friday. Yesterday, a police team from Nahata, along with those from Goalpokhar police station and members of the NGO, raided the brothel and rescued the girl.
Debu Shaw, another uncle of the girl, was also with the law enforcers during the raid. He told the police that Dinesh had a running feud over the ownership of a plot of land and had frequent quarrels with the girl’s father. He had taken revenge on his brother by selling of his niece to the brothel, said Debu.
The officer-in-charge of Goalpokhar police station, Wahab Mollah, said the girl was taken into safe custody and was being kept at the Islampur jail overnight.
“We carried out the rescue operation along with the Nahata police and the NGO. We have informed her family members that she will be produced in court tomorrow,” said Mollah.
