HOME AGAIN: Gayathri S. has made a miraculous escape from an alien country. Photo: K. Venkatesh

The “visible distinguishing mark” specified in her passport is a scar on her forehead. Gayathri does not remember how she got it. It doesn’t matter, for that was a very long time ago. It’s the other scar, the scar in her memory, that hurts.

In the past six months or so, the life of 28-year-old Gayathri S., a semiliterate woman originally from Chitradurga district, has been spent on an emotional roller-coaster. Her story, like those of hundreds of her sisterhood, is one of betrayal, lust, humiliation and torture and in the end, also of hope, of how government agencies — if they have the will — can deliver justice to exploited women.

She made news when she was rescued from Kuwait from the clutches of a fraudulent employment agent and brought back to Bangalore, her hometown, this month. The incident has yet again exposed the thriving West Asian job racket, which began in Kerala, and has spread to Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and now Karnataka, involving a nexus of agents, airport authorities and sometimes even the police.

Gayathri, mother of two, was working as a tailor in a garment factory in the city and had reconciled to the fact that life is never fair. She had divorced her husband, Shivacharya Basavalingaiah, some years ago. Her parents abandoned her following the divorce. She had sent her son, Shashikumar, 10, to live with her husband in Bellary and admitted her daughter, Divya, 12, to an orphanage in the city. During her days as a factory worker she made friends with her co-worker Jabina Taz and her husband Mohammed Yakoob. They sympathised with her situation and proposed the idea of arranging a similar job in West Asia through an agent, Lakshmipathy Raju.

Gayathri succumbed to the pretty job picture painted by her co-worker. The irony of it all was she literally paid for her misfortune. “I had to pay them Rs 32,000,” she says, shaking her head. This she scrounged together by “selling my jewellery and every little item in the house, including the cot”. But when she got to Kuwait, there was no job at a garment factory waiting for her. Instead, she was sold into what amounted to slavery in Kuwaiti households (see box).

“She was virtually sold off as a slave,” says Justice Nanjundappa Venkatachala of the Lok Ayukta, an anti-corruption body set up during the chief ministership of Ramkrishna Hegde in 1984 through the Lok Ayukta Act. Following a smuggled letter from Gayathri, pleading for rescue from her situation, the Lok Ayukta passed a judicial order on May 18. The order sought the help of the city police commissioner to “take appropriate immediate steps against the accused Yakoob, his wife Jabina, and their accomplice in Kuwait, Lakshmipathy Raju”.

The police forwarded the order to the city crime branch (CCB) which then called the Indian embassy in Kuwait which in its turn contacted Raju. The latter was forced to arrange for her tickets for her journey home which took her via Bahrain, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, and Chennai, before she finally boarded the bus to Bangalore. She arrived on the night of June 5 and put up at her daughter’s orphanage.

Says Lok Ayukta vigilance officer, Sayed Riyaz, “If all of us realise the urgency of the situation and work together we can provide relief to many like Gayathri.”

The Lok Ayukta will not have to wait long. Two more similar complaints have already been lodged with it since Gayathri’s “miraculous escape” hit the local dailies. G. Gopal, father of another girl, Maragatham, who was lured to Kuwait by a travel agent at Coles Park here, has appealed to the Lok Ayukta to bring back his daughter. He has alleged that his daughter, who went to Kuwait on April 19, was being sexually abused there. The plea was forwarded to the police commissioner on June 22 to “treat the matter as most urgent”. Action is yet to be taken. Another complainant, 18-year-old Precilla, has also sought the help of the Lok Ayukta, saying her mother, who was similarly sent to Kuwait by another agent at Jeevanbimanagar, was being overworked by her employers and beaten by her agent for complaining.

Duping illiterate or desperate women into the domestic employment trade is an easy process, says Riyaz. Fly-by-night operators lure their victims either through ads in the papers or by identifying their prey and befriending them. The victims, naturally, are in no position to check the kind of visas issued to them, which are usually only tourist visas. Once they arrive at their destination, they’re sent to work as domestics on the persuasion that they would then have time to apply for permanent visas which would allow them to graduate to better jobs. That never happens as they are dispossessed of even their passports by the agents.

But while Gayathri may have made a miraculous escape from an alien country, she has to rebuild her life in her own. She came back with less than Rs 10,000 — which meant, in effect, that the so-called salary she was meant to earn as a domestic help went into Raju’s pockets. “Kuwait problem, India also same problem,” she says in her broken English. But she has reason to live all the same. As she says, “I have two very good children, if it were not for them I would have committed suicide.’’

The good news is Justice Venkatchala has found Gayathri a job as a tailor at the Indus Textiles Private Ltd., a garment firm in Bangalore. Oh, and yes, her ex-husband has returned her son to her, believing she can now rear him.

Gayathri’s story

Jabina and Yakoob had made arrangements for my travel. On February 22, I was sent to Hyderabad for emigration clearance at the passport office. I was asked to meet Yesu, a contact of Yakoob’s. Everyday, he would take me to the passport office and we would come back without the clearance stamp. He even tried to molest me on a couple of occasions. I told him, if he did not stop I would kill him and go to jail instead of Kuwait. On the fifth day, Yesu told me to go to a particular officer who stamped my passport without asking any questions. On March 4, we were at Mumbai airport. I was included in a group of Indian women. The immigration officials gave us dirty looks. We reached Kuwait and the brother of the agent there called Raju took us to his office. It was a room full of women.

During the whole day Raju gave us only one dry chapatti called a kabob to eat. The next day, we were given only rice and sambar at three in the afternoon. After a few more days, Raju’s brother Venu sold me off to a Kuwaiti family for 210 dinars.

I had to do the cooking and cleaning. I would wake up at 5.30 am and start work. By the time I finished the morning chores it would be 10 am which is the time I would get my breakfast of kabobs and cheese. I am a vegetarian and I would be nauseated every time I had to chop mutton and chicken. I would usually retire to bed in my tiny shared room by midnight after I washed my clothes. I tried to commit suicide by swallowing 25 painkillers but failed.

I told Raju I wanted to go back. He simply took me to another home. There the lady would sleep the whole day and party the whole night. I was required to keep her house spick and span, cleaning her wardrobe full of shoes and other things daily. I knew Raju would not help me so I remembered that the Lok Ayukta had once helped me get some of my husband’s dues from his company. I decided to write a letter to them. But how was I to post it? I was not allowed to go out. One day, the lady’s sister came visiting. Her maid was an Indian and I told her to post the letter. After some days, the Indian embassy called the house where I was working. The lady asked Raju to deal with it. Raju warned me not to reveal anything to the embassy. He would often beat me and sometimes say how much he loved me. Once at the embassy, I told them everything and that I wanted to go back. Raju was instructed to send me back. He took another five days saying tickets were not available. He finally took all my money and sent me back with less than Rs 10,000.