Traffickers try new tactics to exploit two girls

After rescuing 260 people at the border last year, our rescue agents in Nepal are seeking to clamp down further on human trafficking across the border this year despite traffickers now appearing to be more cunning than ever.

Traffickers typically isolate their target girl and manipulate her across the border to a neighbouring country by either catfishing her online or offering a fake high-paying job.

But this was not the case for Bilhana, 22, who was on the brink of being trafficked three weeks ago after her trafficker used new tactics and charmed and lied to her parents and extended family too.

Winning the lottery
Bilhana was raised in a village in a rocky and mountainous region of Nepal, sitting in the shadow of the goliath mountain, Mount Everest. Her family is poor as her father is a labourer who makes about a 20-dollar bill a week. To keep the family afloat, Bilhana dropped out of school at about age 10 and worked alongside her father.

In Nepal, kids in impoverished families often forgo their education for early employment.

Two months ago, Bilhana met a woman named Sona, 30, who asked about her employment. Sona discovered how little she was earning at her village and told her she could catapult her income from about $10 to an eye-watering $100 a week. This was a dreamy offer as many working women in the country do not get paid.

The catch, however, was she had to leave her family and work in a neighboring country.

Bilhana could not go unless her parents got her a passport. But Sona persuaded her parents to let her leave the country by flattering them with the idea of their daughter becoming wealthy. Plus Sona offered to pay for her travel costs. The parents were easily convinced and got her a passport.

Bilhana told her cousin about her upcoming trip, at which she decided to tag along too.

Child Rescue has observed a trend where traffickers target more than one family member. In December last year, our team rescued twin sisters, a brother and a sister, and a mother and her child. Just last month, border agents also intercepted a group of three sisters.

A lesson in deception

To begin the journey abroad, Sona took the girls to her house where they stayed for a week.

Sona took this time to groom the girls. She handed them new cell phones and clothes and got them to daydream about how beautiful and rich they will become after they cross the border. This fantasy stands in black and white contrast to their lives in an impoverished village.

After their stay, Sona handed them each a bus ticket and a few dollars to travel to a town on the outskirts of the country. A man picked them up and took them to a luxury hotel for a night.

Here, he trained the girls to cross the border without being stopped in their tracks. He got them to memorise a list of lies about their travel plans to use if they were questioned by border security. This is a normal strategy. Child Rescue noted 48 instances of girls being told to lie at the border between just October and November last year.

But – straying far from normal – this man went one step further.

He was attempting to add layers of artificial authentication to sneak these girls across the border.

On the morning of January 21, the man drove the girls to the border in an auto rickshaw, a three-wheeled motorised cart. When they arrived, however, he told them to keep their bags and passports in the cart while he drove away to pick up something.

Bilhana and her cousin were now left alone to cross the border.

It’s showtime

As the girls attempted to walk through the border point, our organisation’s border agents brought them to a halt. They asked the girls where and why they were travelling.

Remembering her memorised lines, Bilhana told our agents she lived nearby and was simply popping across the border to buy vegetables. Her cousin said she was crossing to get medicine. The girls also said they were friends, not relatives.

Our border agents asked to call their parents but Bilhana said she did not have her home’s contact phone number. Our border agents, unconvinced by such a claim, then took her cell phone and dialled for her mother. Bilhana’s mother – who was also coached to lie – repeated the girls’ excuses but hung up when our agents asked what stores the girls planned to visit.

Then a man called one of the girl’s phones and asked if they had crossed the border yet.

Our border agents continued to press and question the girls, but they simply parroted the same lies. With questions getting them nowhere, our staff begin to counsell them about the reality and dangers of human trafficking in Nepal. After a while, Bilhana and her cousin finally confessed the truth.

The girls stayed in one of our transitional homes where they were further counselled and educated on human trafficking. They remained there until their parents arrived to bring them home.

Sona, on the other hand, switched off her phone after discovering the girls were rescued by our agents, while the male trafficker was caught and sent to a police station. A legal case is now being built against him.

Finding the next one
In Nepal, Bilhana and her cousin’s situation is unfortunately routine. Nearly 35,000 citizens were trafficked in the country in 2018, according to an article in 2019 by The Kathmandu Post, a major Nepal-based newspaper. Of this number, 15,000 were women and 5000 were children, while the rest were men. For these flood of victims, the lifestyles waiting for them across the border were most-likely relating to sexual or labour exploitation.