Kathmandu, September 10
Salomi and Jenny are now in home in Sri Lanka. They would perhaps never remember their dream of going to Canada again, but with profound horror they shall recount their macabre in Kathmandu.
A lot has been written about Nepali women who have fallen prey to human traffickers because of their wish to settle in Europe, Canada or the United States. But after listening to what the two Sri Lankans had to say, Nepal’s police has come to a conclusion: Human traffickers are now using Nepal as a transit.
Twenty-four year-old Salomi and 34-year-old Jenny used to run a beauty parlour in Sri Lanka’s Tamil-majority Anuradhapuram. The desire of the women, from middle-class families, to settle in Canada, led them to the confines of a hotel room Kathmandu, where they would spend three for three long months.
It all began when Dhanusan, a Sri Lankan, convinced the two women to pay up 500,000 Sri Lankan rupees and board a flight to Indonesia on June 26. They were kept at the Jakarta Airport for five days and then sent to Malaysia, from where they were supposed to fly to Canada.
But they landed in Kathmandu where they were taken to Thamel and held captive. “But we did not lose hope of getting to Canada,” they told police. “Another Sri Lankan showed us to our room in Biswanath Hotel in Thamel, and said he would come back in a few days, but he never did.”
It wasn’t immediately clear why the women were held in Thamel. But investigators believe traffickers may have been preparing to take them out of Kathmandu to a third country, which may not have been Canada.
“The hotel owner took our passport. Every day we would cry thinking about home,” Salomi said after she was rescued “We hope that no one has to go through what we had to in the last three months.”
The duo was rescued by a joint team from IOM, CIB and Shakti Samuha, an NGO working against human trafficking. They stayed at Shakti’s Safe Home for a few days and returned home on Thursday with support from IOM.
“There are many Sri Lankan women who have gone missing in the past few years as they try to get out of the country. Are there any other Sri Lankan women being held captive in Kathmandu?” Jenny asked before leaving Kathmandu.
Salomi said,”Now we will return to our village and work there. We will ask our government to take against those involved in the illegal operations.”
Shakti Samuha’s Director Dileep Koirala says a lot of Bangladeshis have been found stranded in Nepal, but this was the first time Sri Lankans were rescued. He says police should investigate into the hotel operations to get to the bottom of this case.
