Minor rescued at city station; forcibly married to man

The Railway Protection Force (RPF) rescued a 15-year-old Nepali girl at the City Railway Station on the afternoon of September 12. They suspect the girl was forcibly married to an elderly man.

A senior RPF official admitted that this was the first instance of a girl being trafficked from Nepal and found in Karnataka.

Sources said the girl did not know Bengaluru or how far the city was from home, except that she was kept in a small room and could not leave. The official said the girl's parents were unaware that she was taken to India and were looking for her.

Sources said the minor girl was an eighth grader at a Nepali school when a distant woman relative trafficked her to Himachal Pradesh on the pretext of offering her a job in India. Three months later, she was sold to an elderly man and was brought to Bengaluru.

Sources suspected that she was kept in captivity for a month and a half, before she could manage to escape and walk to the City Railway Station in the hope of getting home by train.

Officers from the RPF's operation Nanhe Farishtey rescued the girl on September 12 at 2.30 pm and counselled her for five hours before she could begin to talk in broken Hindi. The girl cried profusely and women police officers, belonging to RPF Shakti, got through to her.

The girl told them that she was forced into marriage with an elderly man. The railway police are probing whether the man is a resident of Bengaluru.

"Vigilant citizens reporting suspected cases of children in danger will act as force multiplier for RPF officials who are fewer in numbers," said RPF divisional security commissioner Debashmita Chattopadhyay Banerjee.

The girl has been handed over to Childline, who will produce her before the child welfare committee magistrate and reunite her with her parents.