Ram Kumar Kamat

A Delhi court has released four Gulf-bound Nepali girls, who got arrested from the Indira Gandhi International Airport in November for trying to fly on forged passports.

Kalpana Basnet of Dang, Janaki Singh of Dailekh, Shanta Tamang of Morang and Sabitra Oli of Dang are now in the protective custody of the Nepali Embassy.

According to the embassy’s legal counsel Prem Kshetri, the girls got released after spending less than three months in jail.

Nepali agent Shankar KC had brought Kalpana and Janaki to India, while another agent Bhim Bahadur had brought Sabitra and Shanta.

The embassy today handed over Ramesh, a Kanpur resident who had gone to the Tihar jail to receive two of the imprisoned girls falsely claiming to be their relative, to Delhi police, the embassy’s Deputy Chief of Mission Khaganath Adhikari said, suspecting that Ramesh may have acted at the behest of a Nepali agent.

“We doubted Ramesh’s intention because only on Monday some people, identifying themselves as relatives of nine such Nepali girls, took them away from the Tihar jail before we could reach there to receive them,” Adhikari said. He suspected that the nine girls might have fallen into the trap of self-styled manpower agents again. Kshetri said such victims should be handed over to the embassy to save them from the agents’ trap. Adhikari said a network of self-declared agents is working in Nepal and the Gulf countries, luring poor and ignorant Nepali women by promising to provide free air tickets and food other costs needed to make it to the Gulf. “The agents tell these women that they can pay back the dues from their salary later. This way, poor women fall into the agents’s trap,” Adhikari said.

“Most of these women know nothing about the forgery of passports and tampering of documents.”

Many Nepali women, who have flown to the Gulf via India with the help of such agents, are often found to be lacking proper work contracts and documents, which put them at the risk of physical and sexual abuse.

In the light of increased incidences of passport and visa forgery on the part of such agents, Delhi police have increased their vigilance at the IGIA in recent months.

Published on: 12 January 2012 | The Himalayan Times