The spectre of human trafficking has raised its ugly head after a minor girl, who went missing from Arsikere town in Hassan district, contacted her mother after more than six months purportedly from Rajasthan.
The 17-year-old girl called up her mother only a few days ago from two different numbers to inform her that she had been “sold” to someone in Rajasthan. The anxious mother, a widow working in a garment factory, has written to the Hassan District Anti-Trafficking Vigilance Committee, with a request to safeguard her daughter.
The Hindu has accessed a copy of the complaint, in which the mother says that her daughter went missing on September 29, 2016.
She searched for her daughter and failed to trace her.
Friends of her daughter suspected that she had gone off with her boy friend. Fearing that filing a police complaint would “bring a bad name to the family” she did not do so.
However, she became concerned after she began getting calls from her daughter. Between March 18 and March 27, she received three calls from her daughter from two different numbers. “She told me someone by the name of Shashirekha in Arsikere had met her and assured her that she would get her married, but instead sold her to someone. She is now somewhere in Rajasthan. I appeal to the district administration to protect her,” she said.
Following the complaint which reached the committee on April 22, an official of the Department of Women and Child Development visited the family and collected relevant details.
The official, according to sources, has submitted a report to the committee and the Superintendent of Police for a probe into the incident.
R.K. Shahapurwad, SP of Hassan, told The Hindu , “It is a serious case. I will get the details and look into it.”
