| voodoo nut |
Posted
on 30-Jan-02 08:23 AM
From The Hindustan Times
Escape from Kotha No 71
Rema Nagarajan
(New Delhi/Kathmandu)
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She fled one day to freedom, a month after being sold in a Delhi brothel.
Her breath came in fearful gasps as she tied saris together to make ‘a rope’ and secured it to the railing of the third floor room. Her friend kept an anxious watch holding her son close to her. There was no time for farewell. Their eyes met and then she was over the railing and slithering down the water pipes clinging to the sari. The ‘rope’ fell short. She jumped and fell into a drain. She dragged herself out of the drain and ran blindly.
For 25-year-old Usha (name changed) from Nepal, it was now or never. It was her one chance to escape from a life of abject condemnation in brothel number 71, G B Road, Delhi. Running along the lane behind the brothel, she was helped by an elderly gentleman to escape.
Pressing a fifty rupee note into her hand, he urged her to make off to Mangolpuri where there was a large Nepali population. “I cannot escape leaving my friend behind. I have to get her out,” Usha told him.
Having seen policemen of a nearby chowky collecting hafta for each new girl in the brothel, Usha knew which chowky to avoid. “The policeman had collected Rs 12,000 when I was brought to the brothel. The madam had paid Rs 75,000 to buy me,” recalls Usha.
Usha reached the Kamla Market chowky and outlined her plan to the police. She said that she will go back to the brothel and say she had made a mistake by escaping and that she wanted to return.
The police should raid within a few minutes after she entered the brothel. “This way, the brothel keepers would not be alerted and they would not have the time to hide the girls,” explains Usha.
With her heart in her mouth, hardly certain that the policemen would actually follow her, Usha went back to the brothel. As the madam, Asha, interrogated her about where she had gone, the policemen walked in.
By the end of the operation, Usha had not only rescued her friend, who had been incarcerated in the brothel for three years, and her son, but also five other girls. The madam too was arrested. The rescued women were taken to Nirmal Chhaya, the government-run custodial home. She was in the home for over a year during which time she had to appear in court several times.
Asha is still behind bars after Usha testified against her.
“Testifying in court was not easy. Reaching the court from Nirmal Chhaya, we would to be kept in a lock-up along with the accused in the case, the madams and their managers. She and her relatives who came to meet her, threatened me every time. They said they would throw acid on my face and track me down across the border even if I went back to Nepal. They urged me not to give any statement against her. But I was determined that she should pay for the horrible crimes,” says Usha.
Remembering the torture she had to undergo Usha says: “It was only when I saw the brothel with the heavily made-up women inside that I realised that I had been sold into prostitution. I despaired and resisted initially. But Asha heated a spoon and burnt me with it. Then they brought chilly powder to apply on my private parts. That broke me. I fell at their feet crying and begged to be spared. I agreed to prostitute rather than undergo torture,” recalls Usha.
Usha belongs to a Nepalese family settled in Darjeeling. After her father died fighting in the India Army, her step mother ill-treated her, forcing her to run away to Hetonda in Nepal.
She married a farmer and had a son who died at the age of three. She was duped by her husband’s friend who fed her something laced with a sedative. She woke up to find herself in Delhi where she was sold to a brothel.
After spending nearly a month in a brothel and then a year in the custodial home, Usha is now back in Nepal. All the women who went back with her have gone home including her friend and her son.
But no one has come to take her home. “It hurts to think that I have no home to go back to and no one who wants me. My mission is clear in life — I want to save as many girls as possible from those inhuman brothels,” says Usha. She works with Maiti, an organisation fighting trafficking of women.
Usha will soon be deputed to help the border patrol spot traffickers and their victims and thus save the girls from a condemned life in brothels.
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