The women, trying to recover from severe trauma, were not even in a position to go back to their months of ordeal in a foreign land. However, one of the victims was bold enough to speak to mediapersons in the office of Maiti Nepal, the rescuer of the victim, on condition of anonymity. 

 

“I am one among three women in my group whom Nepali agents in Mumbai sweet-talked into going to Saudi Arabia for lucrative job, that too, for free. We stayed in Mumbai for one month before preparing passports and stamping visa on them. We flew to the Gulf country in October 2010, but the promise was not kept,” she recounted. They had reached Mumbai via the open Nepal-India border.

 

Human traffickers had sent them to Saudi Arabia through an illegal route by forging Nepali passports and citizenship certificates and immigration authorities had deported them to Mumbai within three days. Indian officials arrested them upon arrival and sent them to jail where they spent more than one year. Maiti Nepal hired a lawyer to defend their case and eventually brought them home last week. 

 

According to Maiti Nepal, Indian authorities were convinced that the women were innocent and were trafficked to the Gulf with the promise of money-spinning jobs there. The traffickers are still at large. “We were unaware that such things could happen as we are uneducated and poor. The agents assured they would send us to the Gulf for free. We did not pay a single paisa, but fell prey to fraudsters,” the woman lamented. 

 

Using forged passports, a large number of Nepali and Indian women go to Gulf countries. Most of them are working in subhuman conditions there. Six other rescued women are aged between 16 to 45 and have similar stories of trauma and being lost in Mumbai. 

 

The racketeers had not managed to traffic them to the Gulf immediately. They were stranded for one month after the alleged agents gave them the slip. According to them, the agents had promised them free visa to Saudi Arabia. 

 

Racketeers operating from Mumbai and Delhi counterfeit Nepali passports and citizenship certificates by replacing their photos with that of others to send women abroad illegally. 

 

The Central Investigation Bureau of Nepal Police has also arrested five women for possessing forged Nepali passports to go abroad for employment upon deportation from the Gulf in the past two months.