As the car drove past an Uzbek shop on a busy south Delhi road, Afroza reminisced about the roads leading to the flats where she was once held hostage.
Afroza, from Andijan, Uzbekistan, came to Delhi in January 2022. Human traffickers brought them to Delhi via Dubai and Nepal.
Here they were kept in different flats and hotels and forced to become sex workers.
He was released in August 2022 after a campaign by the Delhi Police and NGO ‘Empowering Humanity’.
Afroza has since been living under the care of an NGO and is fighting a legal battle against the human traffickers who brought her to Delhi from Uzbekistan.
Afroza didn’t remember the house numbers but after straining her memory, passing through many streets and losing her way several times, she finally stopped by the tall building in Delhi’s NAB Sarai, where she first met her. Time was brought.
There were tears in her eyes and she was breathing heavily. But after a few minutes, the wetness of the eyes turned into anger. She quickly climbed several stairs and reached outside the door of the flat where she was tortured.
“When I was brought here, five girls were already there,” says Afroza. From Uzbekistan I was first brought to Dubai, then Nepal and then Delhi by road. I was tired and was allowed to rest for two days.
‘They took me shopping, gave me small clothes as gifts. After two days I was forced to have sex. When I refused, I was beaten.
“After arriving in Delhi, I rested only for the first two days, after that I was not allowed to sit in peace even for a day,” says Afroza. Sometimes kept in a flat and sometimes in a hotel.
Every year, human traffickers bring hundreds of girls from Central Asia to India through Nepal on the pretext of jobs and force them into sex work.
Many girls are also brought in on medical visas and tourist visas.
According to the statement given in the court, Afroza was contacted through social media and offered a job in Dubai. The human traffickers somehow knew about his sick mother and the poor financial situation of the family.
“I accepted the job offer in Dubai,” says Afroza. I did not know till I reached Delhi that I was brought for this job. If I had any sense, I would never have come.’
Illegal sex work is facilitated by a ‘regular supply’ of women like Afroza and an organized network of exploiters, pimps and human traffickers.
Hemant Sharma, who works against human trafficking, asks, “The big question is how these people stay away from the police and investigative agencies despite entering India illegally and staying even after their visas expire.” ‘
Girls trafficked from Central Asia face a major challenge in that they neither speak the local languages of India nor know anyone here.
Girls who were victims of human trafficking, speaking to the English Publisher, claimed that their passports were taken away and they were threatened with ‘jail’.
The alleged human smuggler who brought Afroza to India, Aziza Sher, also known by several aliases, went on the run in August 2022 after a Delhi police operation.
After a long operation, the Delhi Police arrested Aziza Sher, a native of Turkmenistan, and her Afghan-born husband Shergeet Afghan from Goa.
During the police investigation, Aziza’s Indian ID card and bank accounts in several other names also came to light.
DCP of East Delhi Amrita Goligoth says that Aziza is a commercial criminal, Delhi Police was trying to catch her for a year. Our team was tipped off about their presence in Goa through technical surveillance and human intelligence. “He was arrested after an operation.”
Assistant SHO of Mayur Vihar police station Pramod Kumar and his team, involved in the campaign, tracked more than 200 phone numbers and finally traced back to Aziza Sher. The police also had to take the help of their intelligence network to catch these human traffickers.
Afroza is not Aziza’s only victim. Many girls like her have been rescued from Aziza’s clutches.
Tahmina is one of them. Tehmina, who came to Delhi in the year 2020, was also called with the lure of a job. But after reaching here, she was forced to become a sex worker.
A video of Tahmina is also part of Delhi Police’s investigation. In this video, Tehmina is being badly beaten. The video dates back to before August 2022 and came to light during a police investigation.
Confirming this video, Tehmina says that I was badly caught in the clutches of boss Aziza. Once a good customer came to me and I begged him to release me from his clutches.
He went to Aziza Sher to help me. After that I was badly beaten and videotaped. This video was shown to other girls so that they would also be scared.
These days, a case under the Foreigners Act (staying in India without a visa) is registered in the Gurugram court against Tehmina. She claims that Dalal filed this case against her so that she remains stuck in India.
After the arrest of Aziza Sher, Tehmina has found some relief. Before that she was always afraid.
“He always scared me, I was so scared of him that I’m still scared,” says Tehmina.
Due to the sex work, Tehmina’s health deteriorated and she had to undergo an operation on her uterus. Tehmina says that while she was in the hospital, she was left alone and forced to work again before she fully recovered.
Girls like Tehmina and Afroza were sometimes forced to have sex with six to nine clients a day.
The English Publisher has seen pages of the smugglers’ and brokers’ diaries which form part of the charge sheet. They also have an account of the work of these girls and the daily earnings of lakhs.
These girls say that they do not get a share of this earnings, but smugglers and brokers continue to collect fake loans from them.
Also visited the areas of Delhi where these girls were forced to do sex work. After the police action, the activities have definitely reduced but are still going on.
DCP of East Delhi, Amrita Galigoth says, ‘With the arrest of these human traffickers, a link in the network of bringing girls to India in the name of jobs and taking away their passports and forcing them into prostitution will definitely be broken. .’
“It will definitely affect the business of bringing girls from foreign countries and getting them to do sex work.”
At the same time, organizations working against human trafficking believe that there are still many challenges.
Yamanat Sharma says that the first challenge is at the border of Nepal from where girls enter India. These girls reach Delhi without visa.
After that, sex work is done from them in Delhi and other big cities. The question is, how does all this stay away from the eyes of the police?
Hemant Sharma says that the second challenge is the rehabilitation of these girls. Earlier, under the Foreigners Act, girls were granted bail and were not sent to detention centers from there.
There was a need to think about what these girls will do in India, where they will live and how they will meet their expenses until the legal proceedings are completed.
Tehmina is waiting to return to her country, but is being tried under the Foreigners Act in a court in Gurugram. She says the case was filed to trap her.
While Afroza is a witness in the case of arrested human traffickers.
In fact, most of the girls who are victims of human trafficking are involved in cases under the Aliens Act. Being a victim of smuggling does not prevent them from leaving the country but being accused under the Foreigners Act they are not allowed to leave the country till the end of the case. They cannot legally leave India.
The victims have also been ordered not to leave the country till the final testimony.
On the other hand, the lawyer of the accused in this case, Zubair Hashmi, claims that the victim can go back to her country whenever she wants.
Zubair Hashmi says that in these cases, the victims did not file applications in the court not to return to their country. They have not been stopped.
However, Hemant Sharma says that ‘victims’ testimony is very important to convict the accused. The accused’s lawyers keep trying to postpone this testimony so that they are tired of this legal battle.
While Afroza and Tehmina are waiting to return to their country. “As soon as I reach my country, the first thing I will do is kiss the soil of my country and swear never to leave the country,” says Tehmina.
Afroza says that I will hug my mother and cry for a long time. I miss him so much every day. My greatest desire in life is to hug my mother.
There are no concrete figures on how many girls from Central Asia are trafficked to India, but activists believe the number could be in the thousands.
(The names of the sex workers have been changed to protect their identities)