Guwahati: A Nepalese national rescued by the Yangon anti-trafficking task force of Myanmar on Tuesday has reportedly been repatriated to Nepal.
The girl, believed to be one of the 301 Nepalese nationals who were trafficked through the Manipur-Myanmar border over the past few months, was about to be taken to Kuwait by an agent, also believed to be of Nepalese origin, when she was rescued from Hninnsi Budget Inn on Taung Pagoda Road in Yangon on Tuesday.
As per sources, the girl had crossed the Moreh-Tamu border on January 27. After nine days of being trafficked to Myanmar, the girl was finally rescued after she made a distress call to her family in Nepal seeking their help. The family had in turn, sought the help of Maiti Nepal, a Nepal-based NGO, which has been working extensively on the issue of human trafficking. The NGO had then sent an alert to Myanmar.
Upon receiving alerts from both Maiti Nepal and Impulse NGO Network, an India-based NGO, which has been working in tandem with the authorities in both Nepal and Myanmar through their case information centres in the respective countries, rescued the girl.
The rescue operation was carried out by the Myanmarese anti-trafficking unit in collaboration with immigration officer of Pazundaung, a township located in the south-eastern part of Yangon.
The rescued girl was being kept under protective custody in Myanmar after her rescue.
EastMojo has accessed the letter written by the family members of the victim to Maiti Nepal dated February 4, i.e, Monday, seeking their help in rescuing the girl, which says that one Kumar had approached the girl and lured her with a job in Dubai, and took to ‘Burma’ (Myanmar) via India. The letter further states that the girl had been trying to return to Nepal, but was being threatened by a pimp.
Although an official confirmation by the Myanmar and Nepal authorities is awaited on the same, sources have confirmed that the girl was carrying a Nepalese passport.
Meanwhile, the 183 alleged Nepalese victims of trafficking, including 32 men and 151 women, currently being accommodated at Manipur’s Ujjawala shelter homes, await their repatriation.
The authorities concerned in Manipur, be it the police or the social welfare department, continue to maintain a stony silence on the present status of those allegedly rescued from the clutches of traffickers in a series of raids and rescue operations launched earlier this month, despite several attempts to get in touch with them.
Sources have confirmed that the process of recording the statement of each one of those rescued remains incomplete till the time of the filing of this story.
On January 30, six girls, all Nepalese nationals, were rescued by the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW), who revealed that another group of 11-14 women had already left Delhi on the same day for Manipur. This was followed by the interception of 18 Nepalese nationals including girls and boys, including two traffickers, from the Integrated Check Post (ICP) at the Moreh-Tamu border in Tengnoupal district, bordering Myanmar, on the same night by the custom officials.
As per the statement released by the social welfare department on February 5, the two traffickers detained by the customs had, “already sent around 180 persons from Nepal to Myanmar in about a months and (who) never returned”.
The arrest was followed by a series of raids in various hotels in and around Imphal, particularly Imphal West of Manipur, wherein the police with the help of various NGOs and other stakeholders rescued and arrested several alleged traffickers and victims of trafficking.
Rajiv Sharma, a native of Sunauli town in Nepal, is believed to have played a major role in trafficking the Nepalese nationals, who is still at large. One of the eight arrested included a 42-year-old man, Asha Kali Tamang, a resident of Sindhupalchok in Nepal.
