A love story exposes abuse and exploitation in UP orchestra bands, 32 girls rescued

However, the couple did talk, and what they revealed has led to the unravelling of a trafficking racket showing police complicity; the return of 32 girls, 14 of them minors, to Chhattisgarh from “orchestra and dance groups” in Allahabad in Uttar Pradesh; the arrest of five then for the sake of a 17-year-old in that farmhouse with her. “Every time she was allowed a phone call, she could only do so sitting amidst others. She wanted to tell her mother, but could only say she was fine. As I was leaving, she held my arm and made me promise to tell her parents the truth about the orchestra.”

The 19-year-old did so soon after she came back. The younger girl’s parents, the father a daily wager and the mother a domestic help, based in Durg district, filed a police complaint on June 11. Among those rescued since then is the 17-year-old.

Balod Superintendent of Police Arif Sheikh says they went into the case hoping to rescue the teenager, but it kept getting bigger. “The other girls were rescued as we were attempting to arrest the main accused.”

The 32 rescued girls belong to different districts of Chhattisgarh, including Balod, Rajnandgaon, Baloda Bazar, Janjgir-Champa and Korba. In each case, the modus operandi was similar. The associates of the main accused, Surendra Sonkar, identified the girls to target, generally those from very poor families. Sometimes the parents accepted money to let their girls join the orchestra, between Rs 20,000 and Rs 40,000, police said. If the parents were reluctant, Sonkar’s men enticed the girls.

The rescued girls say they knew Sonkar as “Sheru”, the owner of a dance band that went by two names, Surendra Orchestra and Pawan Orchestra. “He was our maalik, we were told,” say the girls.

But the six-member Chhattisgarh team that went to Allahabad in the second week of June to trace Sonkar hit a wall.

Senior police officers say there “was very little response” when they asked the Allahabad police for logistical support. “At first, we thought it was because Prime Minister Narendra Modi had a rally there on June 13,” a senior police officer said.

But their suspicions were strengthened when they began raiding compounds traced to Sonkar, based on his mobile number details, on June 14 and kept coming up empty, finding neither him nor any girl.

On June 15, after several such failed raids, the sub-inspector leading the Chhattisgarh team got a phone call. Says SP Sheikh, “Sheru told the S-I they would let the 17-year-old go, but the team should leave Allahabad.”

Suspicious that someone was tipping off Sonkar, the Chhattisgarh Police team told the local authorities they were returning, but three of them stayed on. They parked themselves at the Allahabad railway station, suspecting Sonkar would drop off the 17-year-old there on a train back to Durg. One of them also got all the phone numbers of the Karchana police station in Allahabad and passed on the same to colleagues in Balod.

The Chhattisgarh Police team had a breakthrough the very next day. Sonkar’s associate Payal Kushwaha landed at the railway station with the 17-year-old and six other girls from Chhattisgarh. Four of them were minors, the youngest 14. Payal was arrested and the girls brought home by the police personnel.

Back in Balod, a team of policemen sifting through the call detail records of Sonkar saw that two numbers, belonging to two constables posted at the Karchana police station in Allahabad, kept popping up. More importantly, calls had been made from those numbers to Sonkar in the minutes leading up to the raids.

On July 4, SP Sheikh wrote to Allahabad SSP Jogendra Kumar telling him what they had found against Constables Raj Kumar Saroj and Wahid Khan. Jogendra Kumar told The Indian Express that both the policemen were now suspended. “A departmental inquiry is also on.”

SHO Ashok Kumar Singh confirmed that both Saroj and Khan were posted at his police station.

Meanwhile, the hunt for Sonkar and his associates continued. On July 1, another team was dispatched from Chhattisgarh, after a phone number of Sonkar was traced to his native village Kotwa Phulpur. The team had got a tip-off that Sonkar was there with eight girls.

“Our team tracked him down with the girls, but 400 villagers surrounded the team and began attacking them. In the melee, Sonkar escaped,” Sheikh says.

The Chhattisgarh Police then contacted NGO Shakti Vahini, and through them senior officials in the Uttar Pradesh administration. According to Sheikh, instructions went out to the UP Police after this to “cooperate fully”.

Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini says they contacted UP Home Secretary Kamal Saxena. “The SP from Balod told me about their team getting surrounded, and Saxena took matters forward,” says Kant.

Two days later, the Chhattisgarh Police raided Sonkar’s farmhouse in Baraun, this time based on information from the local police. It was an eerie sight, says a senior officer. While Sonkar and his men were not around, in the courtyard stood six girls, all of them from Chhattisgarh. “It was as if they just wanted the Chhattisgarh Police to take the girls and stop putting pressure,” the officer says.

A week after that, informers told the Chhattisgarh Police that 18 other girls were on their way back, the last of those from the state in Sonkar’s band. Four of these girls had been found in a Bolero in Pinkapar, which was being driven by Sonkar’s brother Deepak.

In the third week of July finally, Sonkar surrendered to the UP Police in a case of theft. Senior police officials say a lawyer told him “that if he was arrested in one case, he could not face trial in another”.

Apart from Sonkar, police have arrested Deepak, Dhaneshwari Dewan, Amit Kushwaha and his wife Payal, on charges of exploitation, trafficking, rape, criminal intimidation, as well as under POCSO.