Colin Cooper

Put yourself in Indra Bahadur Sinjali’s shoes.  Your daughter went missing three and a half years ago, and it quickly emerged that a local school teacher and trusted member of the community had sold her to a trafficker.  Sold her.

The trafficker, pocketing IRS 45,000 for the trouble, took her across the Sunauli border and to Mumbai, where, according to eyewitness accounts of similar cases, she will have been groomed: given a new wardrobe and a makeover—a few days of relative luxury before her onward journey.  Bhaskar Karki, from the Esther Benjamin Trust Nepal (EBT-N), who spent a month in Mumbai researching the trafficking process, told me that Lok Maya would at this point know very little about the work she’d be doing, where it would take place, how much she would be paid—and, crucially—how lucrative her transfer would be for its facilitators.

What happens next is still something of a mystery to the non-profit organisations specialising in rescuing trafficked girls and bringing traffickers to justice.  What we do know is that trafficked girls are handled by both Indians and Nepalis in a process that eventually leaves them working as ‘housemaids’ in one of several Gulf states—Saudi Arabia is mentioned most often.

The grooming process serves three purposes: firstly, it makes the girls feel comfortable, well-cared for; allowing them to believe that their new lives in the Middle East will bring them similar good fortune and privilege.  Secondly, the pampering makes for attractive photographs which can be sent to the Arab agents who will meet them at their destination airport, before selling them on one final time to their new ‘employers’.  Why exactly these new taskmasters would require glamorous photographs of their prospective hired help is perhaps better left to the imagination.  Thirdly, the grooming process keeps the girls occupied while the necessary transit paperwork is bought or forged.

I met Indra Bahadur Sinjali inside the Nawalparasi Police Station early last week.  The man exuded a certain solemnity and honesty. He’d brought along his discharge papers from his 23 years’ service in the Indian army—hoping his distinguished career might endear him to the officers he’s been petitioning to help him for the last six months. Having tried unsuccessfully to generate police interest in the disappearance of his daughter (from whom he has heard only once since she was taken—a brief phone call a few days later in which she asked, “Father, are you okay?” before the line went dead), he enlisted the help of the Esther Benjamin Memorial Foundation (EBMF), who have been working with him ever since.

The Trust’s role is two-fold: they spend some of their time investigating the trafficking process, and the rest attempting to persuade a reluctant police force to take action themselves. Put another way, their work consists of a simultaneous effort to convince the police force in Nawalparasi (and in other districts, although the level of co-operation they experience varies greatly) to fulfil their social and legal responsibilities, while doing the force’s work for them in the meantime.

The day I spent in Nawalparasi marked Mr. Sinjali’s fourth visit to the station, and the stress was starting to show.  For the past four months, he has been in regular contact with the alleged trafficker, Raju Chhetri, who, despite confessing to the alleged crime in the presence of police, had been granted an inexplicable three months’ freedom in return for information on Lok Maya’s whereabouts.  His yield?  A Saudi phone number—apparently for the address Lok Maya has called home for the last three and a half years—which no one ever answers.  The schoolteacher, Yam Gurung, has also remained free, in spite once again of a confession and the revelation that he had received payment from Chhetri.  This payment came in the form of “cash loans” that he has rather ominously never been asked to pay back.

Before Chhetri and Gurung arrived, Mr. Sinjali and representatives from the Foundation endured an hour-long meeting with the police during which the validity of the story was called into question. The Foundation’s representatives had exaggerated the story, said a police source, suggesting that Lok Maya’s disappearance was borne out of legitimate foreign employment rather than the alleged trafficking that had already been exposed and confessed to.  It was also suggested that, as Lok Maya had already been missing for so long, the case should not be considered a priority. The distinctly aggressive and mocking tone led Mr. Sinjali to leave the office, too frustrated to stay, too dignified to retaliate.

A later meeting (with both  accused men now present) with a more senior police official was less contentious, and after a total of almost four hours at the station, it was finally agreed that Chhetri and Gurung would be taken into custody—for the legal maximum of 25 days—while “further evidence” was gathered. A small victory, then, and on leaving the station, Mr. Sinjali was clearly relieved, but all-too-aware that this tortuous process is far from over.

There are currently an estimated 70,000 Nepali women currently working in the Middle East, although this figure will not include many of the women trafficked the way Lok Maya was.  Many come from Southern Tarai towns with large slum areas, such as Butwal.  Information about girls who have been sent there is scarce—often the best source of information is testimony from trafficked women who have escaped and managed to return home.

Work to rescue women (and more often, young girls) trafficked to Indian circuses, orchestras, wedding bands, brothels and agencies offering “kept wives”—a short or medium-term live-in prostitute service—is much better established.  The apparently friendly and dedicated female staff working in the station’s Women and Children’s Services office, offered an interesting contrast to the disinterest of the (largely male) Nawalprasi police force.  Here, I was shown a ledger containing the records of girls rescued from scenarios like the ones listed above—one ‘kept wife’ had been trafficked at age eight and finally rescued 14 years later.  The girls fortunate enough to be returned home are helped with rehabilitation by non-profit organisations.  Countless girls in India and the Lok Mayas of the Middle East, may not ever be so fortunate.  It’s time for police forces like the one in Nawalprasi to step up.

Published on: 28 May 2011 | The Kathmandu Post