Six years after she was lured to Delhi by a neighbour on the pretext of taking her on a holiday, the police have traced a 22-year-old woman from Assam who was forced to work as domestic help in the Capital and Ludhiana.
NGO approached
She was found working in a house in north-west Delhi’s Shalimar Bagh, a police officer said on Wednesday.
An Assam resident had approached Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s non-government organisation Bachpan Bachao Andolan in January 2014. The woman had claimed that her daughter, who was 16 when she disappeared in 2012, had been kidnapped by local manpower supply agent Deepak.
She told the police that her daughter had been sold to one Jacob Deep, who ran a placement agency at Taimur Nagar here. The woman’s husband had gone to Delhi in search of their daughter but was detained by Deep in his office, the police said.
On the basis of this information, a joint team of New Friends Colony police station and the NGO conducted a raid in Taimur Nagar. The father was rescued but she was not found. Based on his statement, a case was registered against Deepak and Deep for confinement and trafficking, the police said.
Deep was arrested while Deepak was declared a Proclaimed Offender (PO). Efforts were made to trace the victim, but she seemed to have disappeared without a clue. In 2015, an Special Investigation Team was formed to trace the missing woman, the police said. A reward of ₹50,000 was also announced for clues leading to the whereabouts of the woman. The case was eventually transferred to a squad of the south-east district.
The team started from the very beginning and raided different places in Ludhiana, Coimbatore, Assam and Delhi for more clues. The victim was finally found in Shalimar Bagh. She told the police that she was working as domestic help of her own free will.
