Women being trafficked to Gulf nations still rampant

Gullible women from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana are falling victims despite massive campaigns launched by the government to prevent this

The issue of human trafficking is again in the public eye after emigration officials at the international airport here recently foiled trafficking of two women from Telangana.

This attempt comes about a month after a Malayali woman, trafficked to Kuwait, was brought back with the help of the Indian embassy. The latest foiled attempt shows that despite massive awareness campaigns by the government, women from financially weak backgrounds are still being rampantly lured under the pretext of lucrative jobs overseas.

The 48-year-old Malayali woman, who managed to return from Kuwait in May this year, had told the police that she had met around 15 Indian women—some of them just about 18 years old—in a flat in Kuwait where she was kept by her agent.

Based on her statement, the National Investigation Agency is also investigating the matter now. According to her, the women were kept under inhumane conditions, denied the offered salary, and even put through severe mental and physical torture.

Sources in the Bureau of Immigration, as well as the Protector of Emigrants offices in Kerala, told DH that the modus operandi of these traffickers was to take the women to any Gulf country—mainly the United Arab Emirates—using visiting visas, and later take them to Kuwait using job visas. This was to evade the verification involved in job visa emigrants. Women from Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Telangana were the main targets of these rackets that operate mostly via the internet and phone.

The Malayali woman, who returned from Kuwait, said in her statement to the police that she was offered a tailor's job with a monthly salary of Rs 45,000. She had paid the agent Rs 80,000 through a bank transfer in January and was taken to Kuwait through Dubai.

She was left at an Arab's house for a housemaid’s job, where she faced severe torture and not given adequate food. Later she came to know that the agent had taken about Rs 9.5 lakh from the Arab family for her. She got the embassy involved after she managed to let her family know of her plight.

Kochi City Police Commissioner H Nagaraju said that so far two women have complained against this racket. One of the two accused in this case has been arrested, while the other one was suspected to be still in Kuwait. Steps were being taken to catch him, Nagaraju said. So far, there was no evidence that these women were being recruited for the terrorist organisation ISIS, he said.

Sources in the police said that human-trafficking cases being registered in the state were increasing. In 2018, the number of human trafficking cases filed in the state was 105; in 2019 there were 180 cases, and in 2020 it was 166.