Two girls from Bengal rescued in U.P.

: A heavily skewed sex ratio in Uttar Pradesh is resulting in trafficking and ‘forced marriages’ of many girls from eastern India. The girls are lured by ‘so-called lovers’ and sold to ‘clients or would-be husbands’ at a premium price. The girls are often used as ‘sex slaves’ and then resold. Two girls from the North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal were sold as ‘brides’ on the outskirts of Noida in western Uttar Pradesh. Both the girls, aged 19 years, were rescued by the West Bengal Police in a joint operation with Shakti Vahini, an NGO, earlier this week. Consequently, a major trafficking racket was busted.

In another instance, a minor girl from Uttar Dinajpur district was rescued from Bilaspur district of Himachal Pradesh around the same time.

The two girls from North 24 Paraganas were lured by Akhtar Ali, a resident of the same district. They were forced into marriage to two villagers in Western U.P .who allegedly paid Rs. 40,000 for one girl and Rs 50,000 for the other.

“The girls who are forced into marriages typically end up as slaves. Due to skewed sex-ratio in places such as western UP, Haryana and Punjab, girls from West Bengal and other parts of eastern India are trafficked on a regular basis,” said Rishi Kant, an activist with Shakti Vahini. The number of females per thousand males in Uttar Pradesh is 912, which is below the national average of 940, as per census of 2011.

Physically tortured

After winning the confidence of the girls, Ali took them to Noida in separate trips. The girls were initially confined in the house of Basanti, an elderly woman, who later sold them to Sanju and Tinu of Khatna village and Tulsivihar in Noida, respectively. The girls were practically imprisoned by these men and ‘physically tortured’. However, they managed to get in touch with their relatives in West Bengal, who in turn approached the police and the NGO.

The accused (Basanti and Akhtar Ali and two buyers in UP) have been booked under relevant sections of the law on the basis of two complaints made at the Hasnabad and Deganga police stations of the district,” said Bhaskar Mukherjee told The Hindu , Additional SP, North 24 Paraganas.

According to Sarbari Bhattacharya, an officer with the anti-human trafficking cell of the West Bengal police, the practice of ‘forced marriage’ in the illegal trafficking business, is ‘relatively a new phenomenon.’

“I can recall an incident in 2012 when the remains of a girl were recovered by the police at Khurja in UP, after she was trafficked and forced into a marriage, and then killed and buried,” the officer said.