Bangladeshi women ‘sold as slaves’

Press, 21 April 1986, Page 16

Bangladeshi women ‘sold as slaves’

NZPA-AFP New Delhi Slave runners are smuggling Bangladeshi girls into India to be sold in Pakistan and Gulf countries as slaves or concubines, observers and victims say. Poor Indian couples have also sold their daughters for money, and all that matters is that “the merchandise should be a young woman,” said Dhirendra Pratap, of the All-India Students for Democracy. Mr Pratap said his organisation rescued one girl when it broke up a slave-running racket in February. The girl, aged 17, recounted that "Pakistani agents” told her she was to be sold and that she should accompany them to her new master. She said she managed to escape from her abductors at a railway station.

A girl normally fetched 5000 rupees (about $785), Mr Pratap said. “But if she is fair complexioned, the price is doubled.” On average five to 10 girls were sold every month in New Delhi. "Their number is higher in other places, especially in towns closer to the Indo-Pakistani border,” he said.

As well as Pakistan, the girls were sent to Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, Mr Pratap said. Police officials privately admit the existence of the traffic in female slaves, but will not divulge official figures on the number of cases.

“What you are calling slave trading, we call abduction with an ulterior motive, and we can’t act unless someone has lodged a report alleging slavery,” one policeman said.

“The reality is that there exists flesh-trading in women,” Mr Pratap said.

Usually lured with false promises of a job or marriage prospect, the Bangladeshi girls were smuggled into India across the long common border and kept in slums before they were sold, Mr Pratap said. “When there is specific demand, the touts fan out to interior areas or get in touch with their counterparts in Bangladesh, where according to them there is always availability of young girls willing to cross the border and come to India,” he said.

The Bangladesh Government denies the

charge and insists that none of its nationals arrives in India clandestinely.

“We are shocked and pained by this allegation,” said a Bangladeshi High Commission spokesman, Mr Enamul Haq.

“We have heard this before and every time we ask the Indian Government to give us a list of names of so-called immigrants or girls crossing over clandestinely, they don’t ' give it,” he said.

“There may be stray cases of someone overstaying in India, but there is no pattern,” he said. Mr Pratap said he had come aross three cases in the last two months in which Bangladeshi girls were the victims of slave traders.

The police say officially that they have have yet to receive any “solid evidence” on the slave trade.

“We can produce evidence, but the police appear to be not interested,” Mr Pratap said. His organisation and the Right-wing “Lok Dal” party had appealed to the Indian Government to halt the trade in women, but no action had been taken.