A girl trafficked from a West Bengal village five years ago has been rescued by a joint team of the Delhi police, the Kolkata police and the members of NGO Shakti Vahini. The girl was a minor when she was brought to Delhi in the name of employment and had been missing for the past five years. She was rescued from Howrah, West Bengal, late on Sunday night.
The officers who rescued the girl said that she was not physically or sexually assaulted in Delhi. However, she was not allowed to keep in touch with her family. “She has so far not complained against her employers in Delhi. But it could be because she has been brainwashed by her trafficker who promised to marry her after bringing her to Delhi. She is not even naming the man who brought her to Delhi,” said an officer close to the investigation.
The rescue came after the girl’s father filed a writ petition in the Calcutta High Court last year saying that his daughter who went out of West Bengal for job has been missing for five years. Responding to the petition, the Court had instructed the CID Kolkata to trace the girl.
The CID team came to know that the girl had been brought to Delhi and they got in touch with the Delhi police and Shakti Vahini members.
“In Delhi, we conducted raids for three days along with a team of the Delhi Police and the NGO and finally zeroed down upon a suspect identified as Tapan Sardar in Tughlakabad Extension. After taking him in custody we came to know that he had received prior information about the raid and had communicated the same to another accused named Akash alias Raj who managed to escape with the victim,” said Inspector Sarbari Bhattacharjee from the CID Kolkata.
“Another team that traced the victim’s employer’s address at Krishna Garden in West Delhi reached there and found that the victim had already left the place with Akash. The AHTU team then shared her photograph with the AHTU staff in Kolkata through WhatsApp. The team there kept a close vigil on the railway stations in Howrah and nearby. When the train reached Burdwan, a CID team boarded the train and managed to trace the girl. However, the alleged trafficker Akash managed to ran away by jumping from the train,” she added.
The accused Tapan was produced in a local Delhi court that granted his transit custody to the CID, West Bengal for four days.
The investigation has revealed that the girl was brought to Delhi from her village Sandeshkhali in West Bengal about five years ago by a family friend. According to the girl’s father the man who brought her to Delhi had promised a good job to his daughter but once she came to Delhi she became untraceable.
