A gang in Khulna is allegedly trafficking girls from poor families to India by luring parents into marrying their daughters off to ‘solvent’ grooms.
They persuade the parents by saying their daughters would be happy as the groom work in Dhaka and makes a fairly good amount of money. A few days after the marriage, the girl is trafficked to India where she is subjected to physical abuse.
Sapna Khatun of Sathalia village under Koira upazila is one such victim who was trafficked to India following her wedding but was lucky enough to escape after days of physical abuse. Her eyesight has been partially damaged while the traffickers have allegedly subjected her family to legal hassles following her return.
In February this year, Md Shahriar Rashid, son of Anar Gazi in Sathalia, brought Md Shariful Islam, son of Md Adam Ali Mollah in Kharsangha village of Dumuria upazila, to Sathalia and proposed to Sapna’s father Abdul Goni Gazi to marry his daughter off to Shariful. Shahriar introduced Shariful to Goni as his close relative and said the man gets a handsome salary as a driver of a big readymade garment factory in Dhaka.
On February 15, Sapna tied the knot with Shariful who brought her to Dhaka six days later. A few days later, they returned to Koira but on March 9, Shariful took Sapna to Ghutiari village of South 24 Parganas in West Bengal illegally. They stayed at a house where Sapna was severely beaten for nearly two months on the head and feet to force her into prostitution.
On May 8, Shariful sold Sapna to Indian traffickers for Tk5 lakh after failing to force her into the sex trade. He told Shahriar over the phone that he would give him Tk1 lakh, which Sapna could hear as she was in the next room.
On that night, she managed to escape from the house and revealed everything to a man coming out of a mosque the following morning. The man let her use his phone to talk to her family members, and also helped her to return to Bangladesh on an illegal route on May 13.
On June 17, Sapna’s brother Lavlu Hossain filed a case with the Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal in Khulna. Police then arrested Shahriar Rashid and sent him to prison on August 26.
Shahriar, however, walked out of jail on bail last week and threatened Sapna’s family to withdraw the case. He also harassed the family by lodging false complaints with police.
Shariful is now on the run, and his mother Jarina Begum filed a complaint with the tribunal on August 11 alleging that his son had been trafficked.