After five months of incarceration, they flash tremulous smiles. At Athani, the short-stay home for women in distress at Vanchiyoor, where they have been put up after their release, the three women, from Nepal, are into the second day of their new-found freedom on Wednesday.
Though eager to get back with their families, with more details to be collected for further investigation in the case, they have no choice but to resign themselves to spending some more time in the city.
Like many women who leave Nepal behind in the hope of better lives for their families, the women trusted the same agent who promised them jobs in Kuwait as domestic help. They first came to Delhi where they spent around a month. They had no reason not to believe the agent, vouched as he had been for by someone who had worked in Kuwait.
Soon, the agent handed over to them travel documents that he claimed were original. With two of the women having never attended school and one with minimum education, they trusted his word. The fact that he didn’t take money from them, apparently content to get his cut from the prospective employer, worked in his favour.
Soon, two of the women boarded a plane but only to land in Thiruvananthapuram.
They immediately called up the agent, but he told them to head to the international terminal to take a flight to Dubai.
However, they were apprehended with fake documents. A few days later, a third woman too landed here and met with the same fate.
The Valiathura police charged the women under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and the Foreigners’ Act and produced them in court where they were remanded in custody. The agent, meanwhile, kept promising that he would reach the city soon to help them.
Lawyer called
Meanwhile, lawyer J. Sandhya got a call from Sunitha Krishnan who runs the NGO Prajwala from a group called Maiti Nepal, an NGO, which wanted her to help the women. The Nepal Embassy to followed up the matter regularly. Sandhya brought the matter to the attention of an expert on the issue P.M. Nair, and S. Sreejith, Crime branch IG, and soon, a petition from the women reached the State Police Chief Loknath Behera and the case was handed over to the Crime Branch.
It was on the basis of the Crime Branch report that the women were trafficked that they were released by the Judicial First Class Magistrate.
In between, a lawyer engaged by the women’s families moved for bail, but unable to meet its conditions they landed back in jail.
Sandhya who regularly met the women in jail says they were conned by the agent on the pretext of securing them jobs.
Though the women’s prayers for freedom have been answered, they are likely many others whose plight is much worse.
