16 Nepali girls rescued in Delhi

Kathmandu, July 25

The Delhi Commission for Women rescued 16 Nepali girls from Delhi’s Munirka area, believed to have been on their way to be trafficked to Kuwait and Dubai.

DCW activists managed to rescue the victims with the help of Delhi Police and KI Nepal during a raid at around 1:00am today. DCW Chairperson Swati Maliwal shared on Twitter that the girls had been trafficked to India from Nepal and were being sent to the Middle East.

“The traffickers had taken away their passports, locking them up in a tiny room from where we saved them today,” Maliwal tweeted.

According to KI Nepal’s Delhi representative Naveen Joshi, the women are aged between 20 and 40 years; most of them are from Sindhupalchowk, while others are from Nuwakot, Morang, Makawanpur, Kapilvastu and Arghakhachi; 14 of them were planning to go to Kuwait and two to Dubai. They reached Delhi on a bus and were assured a monthly salary of INR 20,000.

They were cramped up in a small room for several days, according to the DCW chief.

After receiving information about the incident, Bharat Kumar Regmi, deputy chief of mission at the Nepali Embassy in New Delhi, met Maliwal. Maliwal told him that the rescued girls were safe and were in a police shelter home, according to Hari Odari, political counsellor at the embassy.

“Since the girls do not posses passports, we’ll meet them this evening or tomorrow morning to ascertain their addresses in Nepal,” Odari told THT over phone. “Once we verify they are Nepalis, we’ll immediately begin the process of repatriating them to Nepal.”

Odari said an FIR had also been filed with the police on behalf of the rescued girls, for which the court had to take statements from them.