As far the eyes can see, there is nothing but greenery. The river Icchamati flows parallel to the trees and crop fields. The barbed wire fence on the other side of the river gives a reminder that it is the Indian border.
This scenario along the Daulatpur border in Sharsha upazila of Jashore pleases the eyes and calms the mind. The 22-year-old female lives near the area. She was waiting for this correspondent at his home, some 30 kilometres from Jashore city, with her child in the lap on 22 February. Two years ago, she was trafficked through the border near the house. The Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA) rescued and rehabilitated her.
The woman said she was taken to India on the promise of a job there. She was sold to a brothel there. The Indian police rescued her after two years and sent her back to Bangladesh. She says she saw three other Bangladeshi women in that brothel.
Women and child trafficking from Bangladesh to India has not stopped. Security has been beefed up with further stricter monitoring along the border since the regime change in Bangladesh. The traffickers nevertheless find holes as always.
According to the Justice and Care, an agency specialised on preventing human trafficking, repatriation of at least 10 women and children, who were trafficked through the Bangladesh-India borders in the six months from August last year to last February, is underway at the moment. They were rescued by the Indian law enforcement agencies from different brothels in Hyderabad, Maharashtra and Bangalore. Some were rescued from the border while being trafficked.
The woman said she was taken to India on the promise of a job there. She was sold to a brothel there. The Indian police rescued her after two years and sent her back to Bangladesh. She says she saw three other Bangladeshi women in that brothel.
According to the Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB), the number of detainees while being trafficked illegally is 145 from August to January, including the traffickers. Of them, 55 are women and children. Some 162 persons were repatriated from India in the same time period. There are no separate accounts on repatriated women and children.
Speaking to Prothom Alo, Justice and Care country director Tariqul Islam said, “The criminal rings always take the chance of political unrest. They are doing just the same now too.”
A few cases of women and children trafficking
According to the law on human trafficking, sending someone abroad or to a place within the country through deceiving that person with a promise to give a job will be regarded as human trafficking. Trafficking is one of the major ways of violence against women. Visiting different areas in Jashore and Cox’s Bazar throughout the months of January and February, several cases of women and child trafficking came to the fore.
Prothom Alo spoke to three teenage girls at a shelter in Jashore on 23 February. They were on the verge of being sold and trafficked to India through the Maheshpur border in Jhenaidah on 10 February. They are eighth grade students at a school outside Dhaka. One of the girls first received a message on Facebook messenger from an account under the name “Neel Pakhi” with an offer to have a chance to learn dance in India with a monthly salary of Tk 50,000 per month. This was the beginning of the trap.
One of the girls was saying that Facebook account belonged to a girl she knew from before. Her mother also used the same account. After getting the ‘offer’ to go to India to learn dancing, she shared it with two of her friends. They also agreed to accept the offer and go to India together. The women who contacted the girls through that Facebook account helped them to start their journey for India.
The girls said they got on a Jhenaidah-bound bus from Dhaka on 10 February. The bus supervisor handed over them to a man upon reaching Jhenaidah. That man took the girls to a house of a woman. Then they were taken to Maheshpur on a battery-run auto-rickshaw in the evening. The auto-rickshaw driver then handed over to another man. However, the BGB troops chased them while they were crossing the border with that unknown man. At one point, one of the girls stumbled and fell. The other girls could not move much further either. The BGB members rescued the girls from the spot. However, the traffickers succeeded in running away.
One of the girls filed a case with the Maheshpur police station as the plaintiff on 24 February under the The Prevention and Suppression of Human Trafficking Act, 2012. The three girls are from poor families. When asked why they agreed to go to India trusting an unknown person, they said they did not realise that they would be sold to India. They would never do that if they had any idea.
These three girls are lucky. They were rescued before being trafficked. They have returned to their parents. However, not everyone is that lucky. In most cases, the women and children fall victim to human trafficking. They get sold after being taken to India where they are forced into sexual activities.
The traffickers generally target women in financial crises. For instance, a huge sum of money was being spent for a female cancer patient aged 22. The woman was divorced. One day, a neighbour told her the treatment cost was less in India and eventually convinced her that she would be able to bear her own treatment costs by working in India.
Falling into the trap, the woman was trafficked to India on 10 October last year. Hyderabad police rescued her from a brothel on 21 November.
In another case, a girl was lured by her cousin, who was known to be working in India as a housemaid, and was traded to India on 11 February. She was rescued by Maharashtra police on 23 February.
Justice and Care Dhaka office programme official Afsana Hossainee said the teenage girl who was forced into sexual activities couldn’t even talk after being repatriated.
Women and child trafficking from Bangladesh to India has not stopped. Security has been beefed up with further stricter monitoring along the border since the regime change in Bangladesh. The traffickers nevertheless find holes as always.
There is also a case where a woman was trapped to marry a trafficker and then was forced to work at a brothel after being taken to India. The woman even had a child with the trafficker who used to hang the child upside down and force the victim into sexual activities threatening to throw down the baby.
Not only India, there are also reports of deceiving women by luring them for permanent jobs in the Middle East. On 21 November, a woman went to Saudi Arabia after being promised a cleaner’s job by the traffickers on 21 November. However, she was recruited as a housemaid instead. She was subjected sexual torture there. She returned in January.
The traffickers charge Tk 15,000-20,000 per person for crossing the border alone these days. The rate was much less in the past. The rate rose as restrictions have further intensified in the border areas. The victims said after being rescued that they were told that they had been sold in exchange Tk 200,000-300,000 to the brothels.Binay Krishna Mallik, executive director, Rights Jashore
The victim filed a case with a Satkhira court on 16 February. The police have arrested Monirul Islam, owner of VISA Care, a local human resource agency. However, the other accused in the case, Md Rafiqul Islam, owner of Siam Trade International in Dhaka, claimed to Prothom Alo on 4 March that the woman was already sick and could not work. As a result she had to come back.
However, the victim claimed she was subjected to unbearable torture in Saudi Arabia.
The hotspots of trafficking
Relevant persons say woman trafficking is more frequent in areas along the Benapole border in Jashore including Putkhali, Daulatpur, Gatipara, Sadipur, Rudrapur; Maheshpur border in Jhenaidah and border areas in Satkhira. There are also reports of Sylhet Tamabil border and Cumilla border areas being used as routes for human trafficking sporadically.
Human rights organisation Rights Jashore executive director Binay Krishna Mallik and BNWLA programme officer Rekha Biswas said the borders are more restricted at the moment. However, human traffickers have not stopped. They are using unprotected border areas as routes for trafficking.
Binay Krishna Mallik said, “The traffickers charge Tk 15,000-20,000 per person for crossing the border alone these days. The rate was much less in the past. The rate rose as restrictions have further intensified in the border areas. The victims said after being rescued that they were told that they had been sold in exchange Tk 200,000-300,000 to the brothels.”
The BGB has 20 border outposts along the Benapole border. The Indian Border Security Force (BSF) hands over the rescued victims of trafficking to BGB and Immigration Police of Bangladesh from the ‘zero line’ along the Benapole border.
Speaking to Prothom Alo, Jashore 49 BGB battalion captain Lieutenant Colonel Saifullah Siddique said, “Different persons are in charge of different phases of the entire woman trafficking process. The victims do not even know who is talking to where.”
The number of victims
There is no specific official figure regarding the number of women and children being trafficked. Justice and Care has given an account of the victims who were in their custody after being rescued by the BGB.
The figure shows that in the 14 months from January 2024 to February 2025, a total of 186 women and children have been rescued back to the country. Some 133 of them were rescued from the border. Besides, some 87 women and children were repatriated from India from August to February. The number of people rescued while being traded is 88. This information is of the border areas in Jhenaidah, Chuadanga and Jashore alone.
According to the US state department report, 'Trafficking in Persons: Bangladesh 2024', the Bangladesh government does not publish information regarding human trafficking on a regular basis. So it is impossible to compare the current data with the data in the previous years and to understand the actual trafficking situation of the country.
The report reads the Bangladesh government has identified 1,210 individuals as victims of human trafficking. Some 210 of them were victims of sex trafficking, 795 forceful labour trafficking and 205 were victims of other forms of trafficking.
The trafficker used to hang the child upside down and force the victim into sexual activities threatening to throw down the baby
However, according to relevant private and international agencies, at least 10,135 people have fallen victims of human trafficking. Of them, 1,784 were victims of sex trafficking.
According to the United Nations global report on human trafficking, some 452 women and 63 girl children from Bangladesh were subjected to human trafficking from April 2023 to March 2024. The figure is quite high as compared to the previous years.
Questioned about having no exact account on women and children trafficking, deputy secretary of the Public Security Division under the home ministry, Md Aminul Islam said, “It’s taking time to organise everything for having a new and inexperienced manpower. We have started the work on developing a webpage with the assistance of the IOM (International Labour Organisation). We are expecting some positive outcomes from this within a few months.”
Traffickers hardly arrested, mostly acquitted
As per the figures of the home ministry, a total of 1,135 cases have been registered across the country in connection with human trafficking in 2024. Besides, some 4,291 relevant cases are under trial at the moment. Some 1,310 of these cases are under investigation. Only one-third of the accused in these cases have been arrested so far. The remaining are still out of the reach of the law enforcement agencies.
Last year, five of the accused were sentenced to life in prison and 55 were sentenced to different terms while 1,250 of the accused were acquitted from the charges. The US report consistently expresses dissatisfaction over the trial process.
Speaking to Prothom Alo, BNWLA adviser Salma Ali said, “The public prosecutors must be trained up to enhance their efficiency to reduce the caseloads. Besides, stress must be put on increasing the funds to provide aid to the victims.”
Upon the return
The rights activists have vowed to become more vocal on these women and children who are victims of sexual and labour trafficking in the fight to establish women rights. The World Women’s Day is being held today, 8 March with a goal to raise voice regarding the rights of every woman. This year's theme of day is 'Rights, Equality, Empowerment/ Development of Women and Girls'.
Success is nothing but the ability to move forward overcoming obstacles. The teenage girl rescued from a brothel in India in 2016 is an example of that. Conquering the mental trauma, she concentrated on study and now is in the Degree final year. She is also a service holder.
Speaking to Prothom Alo last Friday, “I couldn’t have moved forward had I kept thinking about the things that happened to me. I just didn’t get stuck there.”
[Prothom Alo’s Jashore correspondent Masud Alam has helped prepare this report]
*This report appeared on the print and online versions of Prothom Alo and has been rewritten in English by Ashish Basu