Woman returned from Mauritius files trafficking case against recruiting agency
A Bangladeshi woman who went to the African nation Mauritius last year through a recruiting agency has filed a case accusing the company of human trafficking, reports UNB.
According to the case statement, the woman was taken to Fire Mount Textile Company in Mauritius after she reached there on 5 February 2020. Since then she started working as a helper there although the company didn’t pay her wages regularly.
Md Shah Alam,43, a Bangladeshi man who used to run the worker’s canteen and his assistants Furkan, Siddique and Aslam used to threaten her as she refused the indecent proposal of the company’s owner through them.
One day they took her to the owner Anil Kohli’s house saying he had complained against her. She was raped there by Anil Kohli and they captured footage of her. Later, they raped her many a time and forced her to have sexual relationships with others, threatening to spread the video footage on social media.
Oppressing sexually and engaging in forceful prostitution in the name of recruitment in a foreign country falls under human trafficking
They even made her abort a child as she became pregnant at one point, she claimed in her statement.
On 28 December 2020, the woman was sent back to Bangladesh with the condition of not filing any complaint against them. But before that in November they recruited her father in her place.
Since she filed the complaint her father is being threatened by the perpetrators now, she said.
She further said more than 600 Bangladeshi women work in that factory where Shah Alam, Furkan, Siddique, Aslam forcefully engage them in prostitution and the owner Anil Kohli oppresses them.
After the news was broadcast in Bangladeshi and Mauritius news media the culprits are trying to convince her to solve the matter outside the court through different ways.
The woman filed the case with the help of the BRAC Migration programme that helped her to recover from the traumatic incident that happened with her.
Head of the BRAC Migration programme Shariful Hasan said the description the victim gave was grim.
Oppressing sexually and engaging in forceful prostitution in the name of recruitment in a foreign country falls under human trafficking, he said.
The governments of Mauritius and Bangladesh should jointly investigate the matter, whether any other Bangladeshi immigrant worker is being oppressed like this, said Shariful Hasan.