Raped for a year, trafficked teen can’t wait to go back to school | Latest News Delhi - Hindustan Times
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Raped for a year, trafficked teen can’t wait to go back to school

ByFaizan Haider, New Delhi
Jul 26, 2016 04:36 PM IST

Passed on as a sex slave for almost a year and left to battle life-threatening injuries in a Delhi hospital, an 18-year-old from West Bengal can’t wait to go back to school. But, that will have to wait.


Passed on as a sex slave for almost a year and left to battle life-threatening injuries in a Delhi hospital, an 18-year-old from West Bengal can’t wait to go back to school. But, that will have to wait.

The teenager said she was raped repeatedly, sometimes 10 times a day.(Representational image)
The teenager said she was raped repeatedly, sometimes 10 times a day.(Representational image)

Doctors who treated her at Guru Teg Bahadur hospital have advised her complete rest. She still has trouble walking though she can now sit up and also talk.

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The six months she has been home, the teenager is religiously following the doctors’ orders.

She has to get back to school at the earliest, she told HT over phone from her home in Magrahat village in coastal South Twenty Four Parganas district.

Compensation given by the government – state as well as the Union -- has helped her pick up the threads of her life torn apart after she was trafficked in 2014.

“After the state government, the ministry of home has now sanctioned Rs 5 lakh for me, which will help in getting the right treatment,” she said.

That is quite a change from December. When HT met her in the hospital, her legs were infected and doctors had to remove pus regularly to prevent the infection from spreading. She had gag wounds around her mouth.

“The likely cause of infection is repeated sexual assault,” a doctor had said.

The teenager said she was raped repeatedly, sometimes 10 times a day. “I was taken to Rishikesh, Haridwar, Manali, Mangalore and many other cities,” she said.

The men who brought her to Delhi promising a job used to beat her up if she would refuse to meet customers, she said.

She is one of the thousands of girls trafficked every year to Delhi from states such as Jharkhand, West Bengal and Assam. Some are forced to work as domestic helps, which are in huge demand, in inhuman conditions while many are pushed into prostitution.

According to a global survey report, India has the largest population of modern slaves in the world, with more than 18 million people trapped as bonded labourers, forced beggars, sex workers and child soldiers.

The Global Slavery Index by human rights organisation Walk Free Foundation said the number was 1.4% of India’s population, the fourth highest among 167 countries with the largest proportion of slaves.

Battling poverty, young people, especially women, get taken in by the promise of a better life and fall prey to traffickers, who run a well-organised racket.

Seven months after she was dumped in the hospital by a man who claimed to be family but disappeared soon after, the teenager has to visit the doctor regularly and is on medication. And it costs money.

The central and state governments have done the right thing by extending financial help in form of compensation, said Rishikant, an activist with Shakti Vahini NGO that helped track the girl.

“This is the right way to deal with victims of sexual assault and trafficking and this case should be treated as model case and every trafficking victim should get immediate compensation like this case,” he said.

The government is working on the country’s first anti-trafficking law that proposes to compensate the victims of the widespread crime.

But, for the teenager, the battle is fall from over. “I want the accused to be behind bars and for that, I am ready to go to the court every day,” she said.

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