After a series of scandalous news involving women of high society and glamour world, the media seem to have dug up stories of a mother and a housewife so common and yet so exceptional. They represent the down-to-earth women in this land on the one hand and on the other demonstrate why they are the real hero of society. The mother in question demonstrated extraordinary courage to rescue her daughter trafficked to India by a gang, members of which, after arrest, confessed to have lured no fewer than 200 girls and women into the neighbouring country for sex trade with the false promise of jobs in parlours, hotels and shops as receptionists and sales girls.
The mother could do so simply because of her overpowering love for her daughter. She took the ultimate risk by contacting the traffickers herself in disguise expressing her willingness to go to India for the jobs the gang offered. The mother opted to step into their trap aware of the risk involved but she stuck to her steely resolve. Her adventure beats spy thriller. A slight wrong move could land her either in great danger or in the dungeon for the rest of her life. In India she was on the lookout of a clue to the destinations where girls and women from Bangladesh ultimately landed. Then one day escaped from the place where she was sheltered and painstakingly traced her daughter to a red-light area in Bihar. There she sought help from locals and succeeded in rescuing her daughter.
However, her odyssey and ordeal were yet to be over. She and her daughter were taken into custody by the Border Security Force at the time of crossing border. But when she narrated her moving story, the BSF was impressed by it and allowed to come to Bangladesh without taking any punitive action. Her story became viral online and the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) now swiftly arrested three of the traffickers. Her heroics deserve the highest praise. But, at the same time, there is a need for ensuring that the last member of the trafficking gang is sent behind bars in order to give the mother and daughter full security. Reportedly the arrested trio had been in jail for the same offence earlier. The lives of the two women must be saved from the wrath of the gang. This is a crime against humanity, and how can criminals come out of jail to commit the same crime?
This happy ending of the story, however, gives rise to some uneasy questions. Only months before the Tik Tok victims in India from Bangladesh made screaming headlines because of the gravity of the problem. A video of physical violence and abuse of a Bangladesh girl in Bengaluru led to exposure of a trafficking syndicate and arrest of some members including its mastermind. Girls escaping dens of vice and their captors gave description of horrors and ordeals they suffered in India. The question is, why the law-enforcement agencies reputed for unravelling crimes cannot strike preemptively before an uncountable number of women and girls fall victim to such trafficking and degradation and dehumanisation.
Who know how many more such gangs are involved in human-trafficking trade. The latest is that another gang used to send young men by air to an African country with the promise of jobs in Europe. Many of these young men were physically tortured and the videos of which were sent home to families for extraction of more money in addition to the Tk 1.2-1.5 million they paid before. A private airline officer, thought to be the gang leader, had reportedly fled to the USA before some of his associates were arrested.
Now, the other woman's story is really heart-wrenching. She even does not know who her parents are. She was adopted from Mother Teresa Orphanage in Islampur, Dhaka, in 1996 by a couple in Bogura, whom she regards as her parents. Graduating from a college, she took a teaching job at a kindergarten. She met her man of love who married her against opposition from his parents. So they had to move to her adopted parent's rented house to live in. They were not affluent but a happy family with two daughters. But Covid-19 took away her man and she also lost her income from the kindergarten because of prolonged closure. By the time the parents who adopted her also became infirm and she took the responsibility of taking care of them. Her father was deprived of ancestral property for adopting her. She took the service of delivering vegetables of an online super shop. But when in the month of Ramadan the lockdown was lifted, she became jobless. At this point she even was compelled to turn to begging. At last she took a job of a cleaner at a hotel and this was highlighted by a story carried in a leading Bangla contemporary.
It was then that people from all walks of life from home and abroad, including the superintendent of police (SP) of Bogura, extended their help. She has been offered a number of jobs along with cash and other material assistance. Overwhelmed by such humanitarian responses, she can now count on better days. It is her sense of gratitude for her adopted parents or love, here no less than filial bonds, work ethics and undying spirit to fight overwhelming odds that have won the day for her.
These are heart-warming stories because both protagonists belonging to the struggling class proclaim the triumph of women power which Rabindranath Thakur considered the eternal balancing and stabilising force in society.
© 2024 - All Rights with The Financial Express
