Police personnel escort the woman from Hansagiri Lane. Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, Nov. 14: A son has rescued his mother who was sold into prostitution after being lured away by a gang of women flesh traders from a village in Nadia.

The police came to the aid of the young man who came all the way from Tehatta in Nadia district after receiving a letter from a man who had visited the woman recently and had been requested by her to write to her home for help.

Police superintendent Pankaj Dutta said a large force from the Englishbazar police station went to the town’s red light area in Hansagiri Lane and rescued the woman.

“We have arrested a woman, Bandana Haldar, who is a ‘madam’ in one of the brothels. We are looking for the person who abducted her and sold her here,” he said.

The woman had gone missing soon after Durga Puja from Tehatta village, where she worked as a farm hand. She told the police that she was sold to Bandana for a sum of Rs 5,000 after she was lured by a gang of women who had promised her a “good” job in Sealdah. She said she had never once thought that the woman would sell her into the flesh trade.

“Once I was brought here, the women told me that I would have to satisfy customers or I would go without food. I was mentally and physically tortured all these days,” she told the police.

After several failed attempts to escape from the brothel, the woman finally met a man who listened to her tale of woes. He noted her residential address and wrote a letter to her son, giving details about where his mother could be found.

Last night, the 22-year-old youth arrived here and contacted a friend who works in a mess. The friend took him to the Englishbazar police station where the boy narrated the story of his missing mother and showed them the letter.

A contingent led by Englishbazar police station officer-in-charge Bipul Samaddar descended on Hansagiri Lane around 10 am today, sending prostitutes and pimps scurrying indoors. Four vans full of police personnel, both men and women, were placed at the entry and exit points of Hansagiri Lane, plugging all escape routes.

After a brief house-to-house search with the son in tow, the police finally managed to locate the abducted woman from Bandana’s house of sin. Women constables grabbed hold of Bandana, who was clad in a bright orange sari. She was quick to cover her face with the garment as soon as she was being led away.

Later at the police station, Bandana said she was innocent. “I have nothing to do with exploiting the woman, she had come to me about a month ago looking for a room on rent, so I gave her place to stay, she had a companion with her,” she told her interrogators.

The police, however, could not trace any other person who could have stayed with the kidnapped woman.

The rescued woman narrated how, from 1 pm and late into the night, she was forced to please client after client.

“There was no respite even when I was ill, all my pleas fell on deaf ears until finally I met someone who had sympathy,” the woman said.

At one point of time, the woman broke down and cried, lamenting that she would now be socially ostracised in her village in Nadia. “I will tell all the villagers what my mother went through for no fault of her own,” her son shot back.

A few days ago, police superintendent Dutta had conducted a raid on Hansagiri Lane and rescued over 70 girls, all minors, from the brothels there.

Local residents said it was a common practice to lure away minor girls from all over the state and make them work in the flesh trade.