I have spent most of today "watching the paint dry" in this central Kathmandu police station, but it has been time well spent.
On Sunday we received a call from our Indian partner, ChildLine India, that a girl trafficking agent, two other adults and three girls had been picked up by them at the railway station in the northern Indian border town of Gorakhpur. The group, all Nepalis, were on their way to Mumbai, from where the girls would be sent on to the sex trade in Kuwait. We agreed to their call for help immediately and last evening Shailaja CM, Director of our Nepal partner organisation, Esther Benjamins Memorial Foundation, took a flight to the border crossing near Bhairahawa. There she linked up with the ChildLine co-workers and the trafficking party to begin a seven hour road journey home. They got back to Kathmandu at 2 a.m. The adults went straight to the jail at Hanuman Dokha Police Station while the girls went to our Godawari refuge.
It appears that the two adults in the group were a father of one of the girls and a husband of another. They were accessories to the work of the female agent, who is notorious for operating out of the southwestern Rupendehi District. She protects herself with threats of violence from the Maoists, with whom she claims to be associated. We felt that if we tried to register a case against her in her home district it would most likely fall between the floorboards as relatives - or possibly local Maoists - might intimidate the police into not pressing charges. The key would be to get the case registered in Kathmandu first (away from threats) and then transferred back to Rupendehi District for prosecution. The case would then be followed up from Kathmandu in due course. Today we seem to have been successful in our aim and the group will appear before a Kathmandu Judge tomorrow morning before being sent back to Bhairahawa.
It is actions like this that make the greatest impact against trafficking. I suspect that there are quite few major agents responsible for the trade in human lives and taking them out of circulation would turn off the flow almost overnight.
I look forward to the outcome of the hearing tomorrow. Chances are that the individuals who were due to send their beloved daughter and wife off into the sex trade will get off eventually but I can just about cope with the reality of that if the agent is put away for life.
