Anjumanara Khatun, a trafficking victim from Jessore, recently called her mother from Oman, where she had been kept in captive and routinely beaten by the traffickers, and made sombre plea for help requesting others in Bangladesh not to send their daughters there anymore.

‘Mother, you don’t know how much I’m suffering. (Traffickers) keep us confined in room, don’t give food, and torture us,’ told Anjumanara to her mother over phone.

A resident of the village of Gazipur at Jessore’s Sharsha, Anjumanara also said, ‘There are 50 like me, from different countries. They are facing the same fate. Don’t send Bangladeshi girls here anymore. Mother, tell everyone what I’m saying.’

Kept captive and tortured in Oman for almost five months, she asked her mother to take action against one Ayesha Khatun who allegedly took money from Anjumanar’s family in the name of giving her a job in Dubai.

Anjumanar’s father Rabiul Islam claimed, ‘(Ayesha) took Tk 1.5 lakh promising a job in Dubai. But (she) sold her to the traffickers in Oman. Now (traffickers) demanding Tk 1 lakh more.’

Rabiul also said that his daughter was being tortured since he could not pay the ransom.

Ayesha, however, denied the allegations saying she herself travels to Dubai ‘trough the help of the traffickers’.

Instead of getting any help from the authorities, a case was filed against Rabiul by Ayesha when he revealed his daughter’s plight to the local people.

Anjumanara is among the many people who by selling their meagre properties wanted to go to Dubai for work but ended up being sold to the traffickers.

Driven by abject poverty, these people were promised by local agents that they could get jobs in Dubai at the expense of Tk 1 to Tk 2 lakh. They never made it to Dubai, rather traffickers in Oman capture them and demand ransom from their families, and torture them if demands are not met.

Binay Krishna Mallik, executive director of Rights Jessore, an organisation that has been working to prevent human trafficking in the southern district of the country, said 372 cases have been filed since 2012 in this regard, but verdicts came only in 372 cases with none punished so far.

Binay blamed police’s negligence in investigation and the absence of witnesses during hearing for criminals avoiding justice.

Besides, local big shots are trying to mediate the cases through monetary exchanges making scopes for the human traffickers to get away from trail, Binay added.

Binay’s organisation is collaborating with local authorities to find out the real number of people being trafficked every year, since the number seemed to be higher than previously thought.

The local administration could not even make sure whether there was anyone trafficked from Jessore among the stranded migrants who were heading towards Malaysia by boat.