India's Slave Brides |101 East | भारत का दास दुल्हन

in india a preference for male babies has created a severe gender imbalance the shortage of women has led traffickers to sell young girls to men desperate to marry i'm steve chow on this edition of 101 east we investigate india's slave pride trade where few women live happily ever after it's late afternoon and a group of village women share they're drawn together by a mutual and unfortunate their stories echo each other's tragic lives the plight of these women is all too common in one of india's most feudal and patriarchal states preference for male babies has delivered haryana the worst gender ratio in the country it's not just about sex selection and free to sign it's about infanticide it's about lack of value for girls it's a continuum where girls are not valued before they're born but the girls are not valued and treated well even after they're born a government advisor on family issues poonam matraja says with the shortage of women to marry it's become normal in haryana for men to buy brides from other states yes they could marry their boys to girls from other parts of the country in the normal respectful way but it is the extreme lack of respect for women that they do sex trafficking i would call it and the women that they bring in it's not as though they treat them as respected married partners they treat them as commodities that can be recycled and resold a survey of 10 000 households in haryana found more than 9 000 married women had come from other states in most villages we're told there are around five to ten women who have been trafficked into marriage some have been sold to men not just once but two or three times the villagers call them parrots a derogatory term implying they're being purchased all people in haryana are disrespectful towards women like us everybody says we have no self-respect that we are sold like cows and goats we feel very bad when we hear all this because we are human beings and we belong to india just like them was traffic to haryana when she was just 10. from a large family in the northeastern state of assam she says an older girl from a nearby village who she met while playing grubbed and kidnapped her i was made to do field work cut grass feed cows do all the work i cried for a year i was in captivity for four years her captors she said then sold her into marriage i couldn't run away or bring my life to an end there was nobody whom i could ask for help when sanjeeta's father finally found her it was too late she was already three months pregnant i was sleeping and i heard a voice like my father's calling out he stayed for two months to watch how they treated me this is the man she was married off to i was aging and my parents said to me that i wouldn't be able to get married here poor men cannot find a girl to marry that's why we go elsewhere whether his parents paid money for his bride is a family secret i don't know much nor will they tell me no parents divulge such things as it will lead to unnecessary fighting fourteen years later sanjida and her husband have four children two sons and two daughters sanjeed is one of the luckier ones when it comes to women who have been trafficked her new family has treated her kindly but she's determined to help others and now works for a local ngo to empower trafficked women today she's attending court with a girl who was recently rescued only three when her parents died mclisha says she was trafficked by the aunt who raised her at just 12 she was sold to a man in his 70s he fathered her 18 month old daughter but after three years of marriage he died and more once again this time to a man who subjected her to horrific abuse repeatedly her second husband was so cruel he beat her so badly that her mouth was damaged and she was affected mentally she struggles to speak and to be understood how she came to be sold a second time is still a mystery her first husband had two fields so she and her daughter should have been provided for after he died but that's really the lot of trafficked women i am yet to see a case that they have legally inherited some land in their name they are not accepted as the member of their family narendra singh is the local district chief magistrate addressing a public meeting on legal rights he's a strong advocate for traffic brides and says illiteracy and language barriers make it almost impossible for these fragile women to get justice she's brought before the court to depose against the trafficker who is a powerful person who has so much link in the community and communities supporting him so in these circumstances it's very tough for that lady to stand by her statement with her trafficker on the run mcclisher and her daughter are living under police protection in a safe house she was three months pregnant when she was rescued with the help of police she was able to tell the court she wanted an abortion but still so traumatized she's unable to tell anyone where she's from kabhi kabir she may be in the mood to divulge information then i start asking her questions many courses but i feel i'm not having much success today though the police are hoping for a breakthrough in her case we're with the police and we're on the way to moklich's husband's house it's almost two months since she was rescued and this is the first attempt the police have made to arrest him the inspector of the local women's police leads the way to a village in search of the violent second husband she's in no mood to waste time the first person she confronts is the man's mother husband broke the law and bought her from a trafficker even though there's no arrest all is foreign foreign back on the road and this time the police are in pursuit of the trafficker and hope to catch him by surprise at home the woman tells us mclisha ran away from her first husband's house after he died because she feared her sister-in-law foreign many of the girls who have ended up in haryana started their lives here in the far northeastern state of assam almost two thousand kilometers away from haryana it's another world with a different landscape language and culture one of the poorest regions in india a third of its population lives below the poverty line the mighty brahmaputra river provides rich land for crops but is prone to catastrophic flooding many girls and women who are procured for marriage come from farms on this flood plain when the monsoons come the land is submerged the river changes direction and families are displaced making them vulnerable to traffickers you can imagine when the land is gone they have nothing a little array of hope like some financial health financial assistance that will provide your daughter a job in that case says they easily agree to the traffickers offers and this way they found a weak point to the uh for the parents and the attack in this point this way trafficking is happening is a social worker with a local anti-trafficking ngo we are working here since 2010 and in my career i have i have been at least to 100 rescue missions wow today he's taking me to meet a mother whose daughter was trafficked they are very poor people and i think they have no land except their home because her father did last year after the death of her father she was trafficked this is the house she says the mother of that girl she just wants her daughter back to home and she will be happy majida's daughter went missing a year ago when she was 16. she was home alone studying for her school exams when she went to the shop to buy a notebook and never returned we asked around but no one had heard anything i didn't know what to do i was helpless there was no hope there was no solution i just prayed one day i would see her a couple of months later her daughter phoned and told her mother she was in haryana i asked her where exactly she was and how she got there but she didn't know anything all she said was you come and i will go with you i went to the police station to launch a complaint but the officer told me to give them around seven hundred dollars without the funds and with three young children to look after she was helpless and then came more news her daughter was married i wanted my daughter to study and then get married she had never failed an exam and she had her husband or his brother are always present hello hello but today the network is congested and she's unable to get through my daughter asked me to come and fetch her but how i asked her to come here with her husband but she says it's impossible all my hopes are crushed i just hope i see her again before i die majida is not alone in a village nearby an older couple live in hope of finding their daughter one day she was 13 when she disappeared six years ago and has not been heard of since they believe the trafficker lives in their midst the couple say they have spent close to two thousand dollars searching the whole of assam for their daughter they're clearly heartbroken and say they will never give up hope of finding her uh foreign not far from the couple a 14 year old girl is one of the fortunate few to be found she was trafficked six months ago when she and her sister were persuaded to run away with a man who said he was in love with her sister nowadays this is a common trick to traffic girls to pretend having love with a girl and in this method a girl can once have in love with a boy the girl easily agrees to run out from the home to go somewhere and get married she was right to be scared she and her sister were taken to haryana separated and sold into marriage she's now back in her village living with her grandmother while her parents work thousands of kilometers away in new delhi her family her village accepted her very well some victim family they are not accept their daughter after rescuing i think this is notion of honor what the people will gossip some sometimes it matters to some families being accepted is one thing but it will take a long time for the trauma to fade away for mother majida the opportunity has finally come for her to travel to haryana to try and find her daughter noor has prepared the necessary documents for the haryana police this is a police verification letter here everything is included about the case so no that is quite yes it will very helpful for you it's a mammoth journey ahead for majida even with her brother alongside her she's never been more than 10 kilometers from her village or travelled in a car let alone a bus or a plane but her focus never shifts the next day the rescue mission is in full swing the police know majida's daughter is living in this area but are not sure exactly where villages lead us to her apartment she seems excited to see her mother after so long it's a gut-wrenching reunion but it's about to take an unexpected turn majida's daughter is not happy with her mother arrives the police interrogated the husband says he met his wife at a railway station when a man and a woman who claimed they were her uncle and aunt asked his wife confirms the couple trafficked her from assad the husband denies money changed hands but police say he told them he paid around forty dollars to the couple for expenses photographs taken on their wedding day confirmed foreign with the police satisfied that no action is needed the husband tries to make his mother-in-law feel welcome even kissing her feet his wife is clearly torn between him and her mother as the sun goes down majeed is too distressed to talk devastated that she has to leave her daughter behind traffic from other states and bought and sold into marriage these women never stop yearning to return home but even though i want to go back i have no place to go alone and vulnerable they're trapped in lives of endless abuse and slavery must be the indian government is drafting the country's first ever comprehensive anti-trafficking laws but will new laws be enough to stop women being sold into marriage you know making laws is a necessary condition for a society but it's not sufficient unless you change social norms and the way people view girls you're not going to be able to change either the sex ratios or the lack of respect for women buying brides is lack of respect for women and lack of any value that a woman has for sanjida it's now all about her daughters i don't expect much for myself but i work hard to educate my daughters so that they have a better life whatever i went through they should not have to suffer that you

Channel: Al Jazeera English

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Keywords: india's slave brides, indias slave brides, slave brides, indian slave, india slave brides, child marriage in india, indian slave brides, indian slaves, india slaves bride, 101 east india, slavery in india, indian brides, भारत का दास दुल्हन, भारत के दास दुल्हन, दास वधू, भारतीय गुलाम, aljazeera, al jazeera, aljazeera english, al jazeera english, human rights, human rights violations, unhcr, human rights watch, human rights india

Id: VulRaK1i6qo

Length: 26min 0sec (1560 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 16 2016