The girl, who cannot be
named for legal reasons, was finally reunited with her mother last week after
she had spent ten years dreaming of returning home.
Ten years ago, a
12-year-old girl went missing on July, 2, 2006 in northeast Delhi and returned
home after being sold nine times and raped by several men in the past 10 years
A 22-year-old who was
kidnapped outside her home ten years ago and sold into India’s trafficking
industry has spoken of her devastating ordeal.
Thanks to a girl she met by
chance the victim was able to reach Delhi, and after she remembered the
location of her home she was finally reunited with her mother and sisters after
a decade.
She said: "I have lost
my childhood. I was just 12 when I was kidnapped outside my home and the moment
I saw my family after returning I realized how much I had missed out on.
"I am so happy to be
home but I am still grieving for the life I have lost."
She was playing outside her
home in Seelampur, in Delhi, India’s capital city, when a lady started talking
to her on July 2, 2006.
"I clearly remember
what I was wearing. I was dressed in a grey frock and pink flip-flops that
day,’ she said.
"I was walking towards
my sister’s place when a lady got out of a white car and started talking to me.
Before I could even do anything, another man stepped out of the car and dragged
me holding a cloth over my face, and I fell unconscious."
Her mother and father
started looking for her when she never arrived at her sister’s house.
Her 55-year-old mother
said: "I immediately thought the worst and searched for her at hospitals,
police stations and temples wondering if someone left her there to beg or
something.
"I also posted posters
with her photo at different places but that did not help either."
Eventually the distraught
mother and father reported her missing with the police and filed a First
Information Report (FIR).
The victim remembers every
step of her ordeal and recalls being sold to a farmer for £300.
"When I finally woke
up the first thing I remember is that I was locked inside a room with around 20
others including young girls and small children.
"I panicked and screamed
for help. Everyone was crying," she remembered. "The man who dragged me into the car
slapped me and told me to be quiet.
"I begged to be sent
back home. Then a man took me and said he was taking me home.
"I went on a train
with him, believing I was going home but he took me to his farm and made me
work."
At just 12-years-old she
was forced to work all day in the fields, load heavy sacks of grain onto her
back and onto trucks , and then at night she was raped by numerous men.
She said: "I was
repeatedly raped every night.
"So many men took
turns to rape me and if I resisted they’d beat me.
"In the end some would
rape me while holding a knife to my throat. I lived in a locked dark room and
given only one meal a day."
It became hard for her to
remember any sense of time but she thinks after 12 months she was sold again to
another man, and she was sold approximately nine times over a period of three
years where she was forced to work in the day and raped at night.
In 2009 when she was just
15-years-old she was forced to marry a 50-year-old truck driver in a village in
Punjab, northern India.
"I was still a child
at 15 but I was forced me to marry an alcoholic and a drug addict in
Punjab," she said.
"I had two children
with him but he died in 2011.
"My in-laws then
started to torture me. They used to beat me and my brother-in-law and his
friends raped me on several occasions.
"In the end my
sister-in-law took my children to live with her without my permission and they
chucked me out onto the streets."
With no money she
eventually lived on the streets.
"I was lost. I was
desperate to get home but I had no way of getting home.
"I got another job as
a cleaner that came with a small room but the money wasn’t enough. I sometimes
begged and sometimes I slept on the streets,’ she said.
"When a man offered me
work in Siliguri in West Bengal, I went.
"But I was sold again,
to a dance bar. There I met a Delhi-based girl and I opened up to her.
"I told her my story
and she said she’d help me get home."
The girl helped the victim
catch a train and accompanied her all the way from West Bengal to Delhi. On the
eve of July 24, 2016, she finally managed to find her sister’s home and knocked
on the door.
She said: "As I got on
the train and throughout the journey to Delhi I kept looking back hoping there
was nobody following me.
"I remembered my
sister’s place. I knocked on the door and when I recognized my sister I fell to
my knees."
But her eldest sister
couldn’t recognize her and quizzed: "Who are you looking for?"
As soon as she realized it
was her little sister she burst into tears.
She immediately took her to
their mother and as soon as her mother spotted her she fainted.
"My mother thought I
was dead," she said.
"She couldn’t believe
I was alive. When I told her my story she was devastated. It shattered her that
I had gone through so much pain."
Her mother, who has worked
in a grocery story since her husband died in 2008 aged 45-years-old, got the
whole family together – all nine siblings - to celebrate her return.
She said: "After I got
no help from the police I started believing my daughter was dead. I’ve died
every day within. I cannot even imagine what she has gone through.
"Her body is full of
torture marks and cigarette burns. As a mother, I cannot bear to hear anything
like this about my child.
"Since she has
returned home she is not even eating properly.
"Those people have
killed her appetite. I prepared her favourite dishes but she didn’t eat
anything.
"All she is able to
eat is plain rice because that’s all she’s used to.
"I will commit my life
to supporting her now till my last breath. Her life has been ruined.
"They have stolen ten
years from her, her most precious years. She’s never live the live I wanted for
her now…. but I will try my best to give her what I can."
Within a few days of her
return the pair went straight to the police in Delhi.
Deputy Commissioner of
Police Ajit Kumar Singla, in North East Delhi, said: "We have recorded the
statement of the girl and we are now investigating her claims.
Haa alarmimng
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