A woman from Bengal was rescued from the red-light district on GB Road in New Delhi last week, apparently more than a year after she went missing from her home in South 24-Parganas.
On the night of November 24, based on a tip-off, a team comprising local police and members of more than one NGO went to a brothel on GB Road and found the survivor, aged around 20 years.
The cops could not make any arrests.
The woman, who hails from Baruipur, has told her rescuers that she was brought to Delhi by a local man who offered her a “well-paying job of a domestic help”.
“At the New Delhi railway station, she was received by another trafficker who owned the brothel she was rescued from. The man who brought her to Delhi sold her to the woman,” said Virender Kumar Singh from Mission Mukti Foundation, one of the NGOs that helped in tracing the woman.
Garstin Bastion Road or GB Road, between Ajmeri Gate and Lahori Gate in the walled city of old Delhi, is one of the country’s oldest red-light areas.
The woman went missing from her village in South 24-Parganas in 2022. Her family made a general diary at Baruipur police station on July 25, 2022. It was turned into an FIR only on September 5 this year.
A man from the same village, who works in a bag-making unit in the capital, spotted the woman on GB Road six months ago. The man shared the information with the woman’s family and it triggered a chain of events that led to the rescue.
“We had men visit the location in the guise of customers several times in the past few months but could not spot the woman. She was finally spotted on November 24. She was rescued the same night,” said Singh.
Singh was part of a team that included cops from Kamla Nagar police station, and a couple of other NGOs.
The survivor was taken to a home after the rescue. A team from Baruipur police has reached Delhi to bring the woman back.