Women and child rights organisation, Maiti Nepal, apprehended five girls including a six-year-old on their way to India from the border point along Kanchanpur district last Thursday. Two Indian men who were the mastermind behind the operation fled the scene with two more girls.

The five apprehended girls, all residents of the Capital, have been brought back to Kathmandu for further investigation. Among them, two siblings had already worked as showgirls in Patiala and were returning with more girls as demanded by the two men, the older sibling said. The younger sibling identified one of the men as Mani Sardar (Singh) and the other simply as Vicky, both of them from Tabbajarpur, Patiala.

“We were paid Rs 600 per day to dance at Punjabi weddings,” the older sibling said, as the younger confirmed. “Demand for Nepali showgirls is very high for such occasions and almost all girls in this line of work are Nepali or of a Nepali origin.” According to them, they were living in a house with 26 other girls of the same profession in Patiala, with some as young as 12.

Of the remaining three, the six-year-old child belongs to the older sibling whose husband has abandoned the family. One is a step-sister of the siblings while they say they took along the other girl with permission from her family. But the girl denies any knowledge of being taken as a showgirl and said she thought she was being taken to work at a party palace. All of the girls are from Deola and Pode communities, considered inferior in the Newar caste system.

The girls said they were lured into this by showing dance videos which glorified the work and were also threatened with torture if they refused. All of the girls have been directly affected by the Great Earthquake and were living under tents as their houses had been razed to the ground by the earthquake, while the father of one was killed. Earthquake was one of the factors behind them choosing to leave for India, they said.

“A new trend in trafficking is emerging,” Chairperson of Maiti Nepal Anuradha Koirala said. “It is the first time in my career that I have come across Kathmandu locals being victims of trafficking.” Koirala also said that the vulnerability has further increased in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Maiti Nepal also rescued a 16-year-old girl from Kanchanpur who was being taken to India by her boyfriend identified simply as Chhering and his father. A resident of Bhote Namlang village in Sindhupalchok, the girl had been married at the age of 14 to a man who is working in a Gulf country which she has no knowledge of. “As my family members did not treat me properly, I decided to elope with my boyfriend,” the girl said. “He had promised me a good job at his sister’s place in Ladakh.” The boyfriend is currently being held by police in Kanchanpur.

Maiti Nepal is currently under preparation to file charges against the perpetrators based on the evidence at hand and the victims’ statements.