Human trafficking: Abducted women auctioned off to highest bidder

Police arrested 2 gang members and recovered Tasleem Bibi, who said she was about to be sold a second time.

MULTAN:

Police officials have arrested two members of a gang of human traffickers responsible for kidnapping women and selling them off to the highest bidder.

According to police officials, they recovered two women from the site but two of the gang members managed to escape. “One of the gang members who escaped was a woman who was responsible for identifying the women and making contact with them.

She used to convince the women that they should invest in her business and eventually she would call them out of their home on some pretext or other and then the remaining gang members took them away,” said a police inspector.

According to police official, Qasim Bela residents Dilawar and his brother Waseem Abbas headed the gang with former lady counselor Razia. “They used to travel to different villages and she was posing as a family planning centre counselor. Then she would begin talking about business propositions and how if I invested with her I would be able to set up my own business within two months,” said trafficking victim Tasleem Bibi.

Tasleem Bibi said that Razia visited her on August 18 at her home in Faisalabad tehsil Adda Satiana. “She had been visiting me for a week and I thought we became friends. All the while, she was watching my movements to see when my father was not at home. On August 18, she drugged me and her gang abducted me,” she told police. “When I woke up I was in Multan and I was being sold to a Hamidpur resident named Allah Datta for Rs 30,000,” she said.

Tasleem told reporters and police that there were four other women with her when the bidding started. “There was a large room and it was late at night. Seven men were bidding on which one of us would go with them,” she said. Tasleem said that she had remained with Allah Datta for six months. “He kept me locked in a room and raped me several times. His brother had also purchased a woman the same day but they were living somewhere else,” she said. Tasleem said that she was about to be sold a second time in a different location when the police came.

“They took me to another village and I was blindfolded but I could hear that they had begun bidding again, so I figured they would be selling me to someone new. That was when the police team arrived,” she said.

Muzaffarabad police raided a site outside Vehari on Monday night and apprehended two gang members Dilawar and Waseem Abbas. “Two of the female members of the gang managed to escape.

We have police teams searching for Razia and Irshad Bibi” inspector Asim Kando said. Police officials said that they had also apprehended one of the men bidding on the women and taken him in for questioning. “We only recovered Tasleem but she told us that there had been at least six other women who had been abducted by the gang,” he said.

“We are conducting a thorough inquiry into the incident and we will find out where else the gang has been operating,” he added.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 28^th, 2011.