A curse far worse than poverty

from The Telegraph

If being born into poverty is a curse, gullibility is their bane.

More and more girls of the Bodoland region are falling into the prostitution trap in trying to escape a life of impoverishment.

Traffickers lure these girls with promises of a better future than their parents can give and force them into a way of life more wretched than living in poverty.

The fortunate ones escape the humiliation of having to sell their bodies for a living, but there is another trap waiting for them — marriage to people who prefer to “shop” for brides of their choice.

NGOs have long been engaged in a campaign against trafficking in the four districts administered by the Bodoland Territorial Council (BTC) but the gullibility of the victims continues to be a hindrance to their efforts.

The South Kokrajhar unit of the All Bodo Students’ Union (Absu) rescued two Bodo girls from the clutches of traffickers only last week.

Both in their early twenties, the girls were lured by a woman, Bina Goyary, and two persons from Rajasthan who promised to marry them off to rich men.

They even arranged for the two girls to be married to youths from Rajashthan in a civil ceremony.

The rescued girls would have met the same fate as many who are untraceable, but for the intervention of the students’ organisation.

Traffickers are known to target even boys from remote villages. They are lured with false promises of jobs in different cities.

Many boys who have left their villages to work outside have not returned since. Since nobody has a clue to their whereabouts, the boys’ parents can do little but wait.

“Traffickers previously used to lure poverty-stricken youths from the backward areas with promises of jobs in Rajasthan, Gujarat and cities like Delhi and Bangalore. They are now targeting mostly girls, who are apparently easier to trap. They are promised marriage with rich men. It is a dangerous trend,” a senior police officer said.

In October 2006, three girls from Udalguri were rescued from the clutches of two traffickers who were planning to sell the trio to a brothel.

Their arrest blew the lid off their method of operation.

They told the police that their targets were girls from below-poverty-line families, whom they would sell to clients in northern and central India.

In March, a sweeper from the 7 Assam Police Battalion, posted at Choraikhola in Kokrajhar, was arrested for selling two women and their three minor children to traffickers in Uttar Pradesh.

The man and his wife took them to their village in Uttar Pradesh and sold them there.

One of the women and her two children were rescued from Delhi.

“Trafficking of women from the tribal-dominated areas of the Bodoland districts has been on the rise over the past three years. Boys who fall into the same trap are treated like bonded labourers and lead a life far worse than the one they intended to escape. We are trying our best to arrest the trend but it is an uphill task,” a student leader said.