A family and friends of a little girl protested in May of this year in Srinagar’s Noorbagh neighborhood, asking for information regarding her whereabouts. They said that their freshly married, out-of-town daughter-in-law, who had only been staying with them for three days, had abducted her.
The mother, who was from West Bengal, allegedly fled the home with the couple’s eight-year-old kid soon after the wedding.
Jammu and Kashmir police responded to the report by acting, and after a week of searching, they discovered the lady in West Bengal. The cops returned Kashmir with the little girl. The bride could not be returned, however, since a West Bengali judge refused to order her to be held on remand.
“We tracked down the lady. We returned with the little girl that she had abducted. However, we were unable to bring the accused lady since the West Bengali court refused to place her on custody, according to a senior police official. He said that this seems to be a typical instance of both trafficking and countertrafficking. According to an official, it seems that the accused bride may have already been a victim of trafficking before becoming an agent and transporting the young girl from Kashmir to West Bengal for trafficking.
The bride was transported from West Bengal, according to the Noorbagh family, by a Pattan-based agency. They were delighted to wed the couple in a simple ceremony.
Any local in the Pattan region of north Kashmir may direct you to a community where the majority of the males have Bengali wives. For these women from thousands of miles away, many of them have been trafficked to Kashmir with the promise of a better life, contrary to the locals’ belief that poverty is what prompted men to marry outside.
Women who talked with Outlook said they were presented images of a happy life, a picture of an attractive guy, or a job offer. However, many of these women have a terrible existence in Kashmir, where they are once again plagued by poverty and an uncertain future.
Maseeha (changed name), 28, was at her village in the Bankura district of West Bengal. A guy first came to them in 2012 with a potential match for their daughter, who was 14 at the time. “He displayed a photo of a gentleman in a suit. My life will be wonderful since he owned the property, he said. In spite of the poverty, my parents were glad to get rid of me, said Maseeha, who had four children between the ages of 2 and 8.
Life wasn’t much better here, according to Maseeha, than it was in West Bengal. “My husband works as a laborer, and there are days when there are so many crises that it is hard to put food on the table. We occupy a makeshift hut. Home doesn’t exist. zero land. No money, only a new set of difficulties, she continues.
Another lady in her 30s arrived in the community as the wife of a farmer who was 12 years older than she was. She claims that even though her spouse has sometimes abused her, she has nowhere to turn. We don’t have a family nearby to provide emotional support, and this is a strange world to us. “Untrue promises were used to have us married here. However, due to the poverty of our family, for whom I was nothing less than a burden, we were unable to return.
According to a 2019 study by the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai, Jammu & Kashmir prefers to marry underage Muslim females, especially those between the ages of 15 and 17. The main supply states for brides who are trafficked into Jammu and Kashmir include West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and bordering nations like Myanmar (Rohingya females).
According to the study, the cost of a bride might vary from Rs 5,000 to 30,000 in situations when the groom is physically and mentally well. However, the bride’s fee might go to Rs 1,000,000 when the guy is middle-aged, handicapped, or a former militant, with the brokers charging the grooms between Rs 40,000 and Rs 60,000 for each wedding.
Rekha Sharma, head of the National Commission for Women (NCW), said in April of this year that human trafficking rose in Jammu and Kashmir by 15.56% in 2018 compared to 2021–2022. According to Sharma, women are moving to West Bengal in search of employment, but once there, they are forced wed to those who abuse them sexually.
The government of Jammu and Kashmir established a nodal officer for anti-human trafficking units in Kashmir in January of this year. As a result of many local consultancies beginning to import “house help” from India’s poorest states because they are in demand, the government has made a decision.
