Bought and sold

for a few thousand rupees many women from poor families in West Bengal are married to poor or mostly disabled Kashmiri men. Most of the times they never see their loved ones again. Shams Irfan reports.

“For the first few days I had absolutely no idea where I am or which part of the country this is. But the moment I came to know that I have been cheated and sold, I tried to flee”

Surrounded by her five kids at the doorstep of her modest house in a small hamlet of South-Kashmir, 32-year-old Shareefa (name changed) was using every single bit of energy left in her fragile frame to stop herself from crying in a stranger’s (my) presence.

For a very long time, I could not find any words to start conversation with her; as what was in front of my eyes was an example of the worst form of trade in history: human trafficking. “Not even a single day has passed when I do not dream of going back home,” Shareefa said in a mournful voice. But it was only after 13 long and painful years that she got to see her loved ones again.

She vividly remembers the events that led her to the place she was forced to call home and the man who is now her husband and father of her five children.

At the age of 12, Shareefa was married to a local labourer in her native village Ranitala in Murshidabad district of West Bengal, but only after two years of marriage her parents forced her to take a divorce, as the husband was not even able to provide two square meals. So her parents, with the help of a close relative and an agent, sold her to an elderly Kashmiri Muslim for a sum of 10,000 rupees (200 US dollars approximately), out of which only 5000 rupees were paid to her father, rest was pocketed by the agent as ‘service’ charges.

To make this ‘transaction’ hassle free, her parents gave her sedatives (mixed with food), for two consecutive days, so that she doesn’t know where she was being taken.

The journey from Ranitala to Kashmir took her six-long-days which Shareefa remembers only vaguely. “That day I complained of dizziness and my parents sent me, with a close relative, to see a doctor at Guwahati,” said Shareefa in her broken Kashmiri. But instead, she was taken to Kolkata where she was handed over to the agent or middleman who escorted her to Kashmir for a final sell-off.

In the last 20 years, she was allowed to visit her family only once, that too when she was already mother of three children, “He (husband) kept both my sons as surety, while I was allowed to take my daughter with me,” said Shareefa in a barely audible voice.

Something inside me forced me to ask, “Why didn’t you ever try to escape or go back?”

“I was the smartest one among my cousins back home. I could have easily run away but they (the middleman and her husband) threatened to kill me and my family if I ever tried to go back. So I stayed; what could I do,” she asked innocently.

Shareefa is among the many victims who suffer silently within the scenic beauty of Kashmir, she counted at least five names (all from the same village: Ranitala), who have been forcibly brought here against as small a sum as five thousand rupees.  Shareefa told me that in most of the cases parents of the victims end up without money. It is the middleman or the agent who really benefits from human trafficking trade, she informs.

Ironically, almost all the girls who are sent to Kashmir through trafficking networks and are the victims of this lucrative marriage business, resign to their fate after initial resistance.

I asked Shareefa, if given a chance to decide her fate, would she leave her husband and go back to her native place and live there? Or will she stay back and keep on dreaming about going back home someday? She thought for a moment before replying, and then crossed a quick glance over her shoulders where her five kids were listening attentively to her story, with eldest son now 18, she simply said, “I have no other option but to stay for my kids and husband. I cannot go back to poverty now”.

According to Amnesty International about four million people are trafficked around the world every year. And the value of this criminal trade is approximately, US dollar 10 billion per year.

There is no data available with local authorities regarding the number of girls bought here for marriage through trafficking networks. However according to a local member of an international non-governmental organization, who did not wish to be named, said, “Such cases are found everywhere in Kashmir now, their (girls from outside) number is quite high as marrying locally has become unaffordable for the poor over here”.

Often people with physical or mental disabilities are married through these trafficking networks. No local girl prefers to marry such a person.

Almost choking with emotions, Shareefa wiped tears from her eyes with her ‘scarf’ and looked away in the blankness of the vast sky overlooking her small vegetable garden. And I left without saying adieu!