A trafficking survivor from South 24-Parganas district got a Rs 4 lakh compensation credited to her account late last month, more than three years after a court order.
The money is a flicker of hope for the mother of twin daughters in her long and tedious fight for justice.
Left by her husband, sold to a brothel and separated from her daughters, the woman, now in her late 20s, has not given up hope.
“I want to build a pucca home and start an embroidery business. But what I want most is to get my girls a good education,” the woman told this newspaper over the phone.
Her life was far from smooth even before she was trafficked.
Her husband had abandoned her for bearing two daughters. Her parents also refused help. The woman did embroidery work on saris and salwar suits to earn a living.
In January 2017, she was trafficked to a red-light area in Delhi.
A man who claimed to own a zari unit in the capital allegedly promised her a job that would fetch her around Rs 15,000 a month.
The woman was called to Sealdah to “discuss the offer in detail”. She went there with one of her daughters, then aged a little over three years.
Both of them were allegedly given spiked food and water and they were on a train, far from Kolkata, when they regained consciousness.
In Delhi, she was sold to a brothel owner, allegedly for Rs 70,000. Her daughter was kept at the home of another alleged trafficker, a woman.
The woman was allegedly subjected to repeated sexual assaults at the brothel, where she spent close to two weeks.
With the help of a customer, she managed to escape the brothel.
“I knew nothing of Delhi. I could not speak Hindi. I spent the night hiding at a garbage dumping yard. I had no money,” she told The Telegraph.
The next morning, she sold an earring to an auto driver who gave her “around Rs 500” and dropped her at New Delhi railway station. She boarded a train to Howrah.
She reached Kolkata on January 27, 2017, according to her case papers, accessed by this newspaper.
She filed an FIR at Canning police station the next day. The cops traced her daughter to a house in Pandav Nagar in the capital. The daughter was rescued a couple of months later and was reunited with the woman.
The woman now lives in a mud house in the interiors of Canning. Both her daughters are in Class IV of a government school.
Amina Laskar, a member of Bansra Birangana Seba Samiti, an NGO that helped the survivor, lauded her perseverance.
“A dream of a bright future for her daughters has kept her going. The money was much-needed,” she said.
Dyutimala Bagchi, the survivor’s advocate at the additional chief judicial magistrate’s court in Alipore, said the victim compensation appeal was filed in 2019 with the district legal services authority of South 24-Parganas in 2019.
“In December 2019, the court passed an order, granting her a victim compensation of Rs 4 lakh,” she said.
