A family photo of the family in Asiya's home outside Dhaka. Photo: Muktadir Rashid
Within a few days, Marium ended up at a brothel in the eastern Indian state of Bihar. Back in Dhaka, Asiya went to the police station and filed a missing person complaint. She was assured of an investigation, she said, but 40 days passed without any word of her daughter. In February, the desperate mother contacted a man whom Marium had named on the call as one of her traffickers. She told him she wanted a job abroad, too. He told her there was one in India. “This is exactly what I wanted,” she told VICE World News. Asiya then took out all her savings—Taka 60,000 ($703)—and left for the border.“I hid the money under a wig and covered my head with a scarf,” she said. In a few days, she found herself at a brothel in New Delhi, India. “But my daughter wasn’t there,” she said. “I came to know that all girls were not taken to the same place.”Disappointed, she stayed there until June, when her husband called and said Marium contacted him through a client’s cellphone. Marium gave her location—it was about 1,000 kilometres (800 miles) away from New Delhi.At least 20,000 Bangladeshi women and children are trafficked across the mostly-porous and unfenced border with India every year. Most never make it back.
Asiya escaped the brothel in the middle of the night. With the help of Marium’s client and some locals, they were finally reunited in New Delhi. “On the night of June 18, I got my daughter back,” said Asiya. “The brothel owner confessed that he bought my daughter for $3,404 from Bangladesh.” On June 22, Asiya and her daughter were caught trying to cross the border into Bangladesh. But when the authorities there heard their story, it led to the speedy arrests of the traffickers. The three accused—Mohammad Kalu, 40, Mohammad Shohag, 32, and Billal Hossain, 41—were revealed to be running a larger trafficking ring with 25 other perpetrators. Each victim was sold for $1,173 to $1,760. Human trafficking is the world’s second-most lucrative crime. It’s a $200-billion illegal industry, and a quarter of that money is from South Asia, according to a UN report. Police investigations and government monitoring reports show a disturbing rise in human trafficking in the region despite the pandemic, and new ways South Asian women are getting trapped.In February, the desperate mother contacted a man whom Marium had named on the call as one of her traffickers. She told him she wanted a job abroad, too. He told her there was one in India. “This is exactly what I wanted,” she told VICE World News.
Rapid Action Force officials stand with the arrested men who trafficked Asiya and Marium. Photo: Rapid Action Force
A map provided by Bangladesh's Rapid Action Battalion shows the route taken by the traffickers who smuggled and sold Asiya and Marium. Photo: Rapid Action Battalion
