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A 19-year-old woman from Bangladesh was trafficked to India and allegedly raped by a man in Bengaluru. The gruesome incident came to light after the woman escaped the people tormenting her and reported the crime at the Yelahanka Police Station on January 22.
The woman is a native of Digolia village of Narail district in Bangladesh. In her complaint, the woman alleged that she was raped over four days in a locked house in northeastern Bengaluru before she managed to escape. She claimed that a woman and a man worked in tandem to bring her to Bengaluru promising her a job before she was raped.
She stated that her parents are daily wage labourers in Bangladesh. She offered to find work to help support her family and crossed into India by boat on a river. She told the police that she reached a railway station where she met a woman who promised her a job.
"The woman promised her that she would get the teenager a job in a beauty parlour and brought her to Bengaluru. The Bangladeshi woman travelled in trains and buses in India and reached the city. She says she was kept in a locked house with a man who forced himself on her repeatedly for four days," a police official in Yelahanka told TNM.
In her complaint, the woman says that she was later offered a job as a sex worker and was promised a pay of Rs 60,000 per month.
Frightened by the prospect of the job, the woman found an opportunity on January 22 to escape. She sought help from members of the public who called the police control room.
"She spoke only Bangla and did not even understand Hindi. She had been given an Indian sim card which was activated on January 10. We have not come across similar cases like this in Yelahanka," says the police official.
The official added that the woman is neither able to recognise the house she was locked in nor is she able to identify the people who tormented her.
The woman was sent to a government run rehabilitation centre run by the women and child welfare department. Police stated that her identity will be cross checked with officials in Bangladesh before she is possibly deported back to her home country.
The police in Bengaluru detained as many as 60 persons on Saturday, suspecting them to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. They were detained in Marathahalli, Ramamurthynagar and Bellandur police station limits before they were deported to the India-Bangladesh border.
Earlier this month, Bengaluru police also arrested three persons stating that they are illegal Bangladeshi immigrants in a migrant settlement in Munekolala near Whitefield.