Around 2000 women trafficked to India have returned to the country over the past ten years through legal means with the assistance of two non-governmental organizations.

However, there is no accurate number of how many women and children have actually been trafficked and how many women are still there, trapped by the traffickers, Prothom Alo reported.

Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (NWLA) and Rights Jessore, the two organizations working to bring back women who have been trafficked to India, said there are still over 50 women who have been caught by police and kept at government and non-government safe homes there.

Efforts are on to bring them back with help from the governments of Bangladesh and India.

An analysis of 250 incidents of women trafficking to India shows that 90 percent of the victims are from low-income families. And 95 percent of them have been lured to India with promises of good jobs. Later they are sold to human trafficking rings. Most of these women are forced into commercial sex work.

The matter of women trafficking came to the limelight once again when a video of a young Bangladeshi girl being inhumanly tortured in India went viral

The age of 154 of these 250 victims has been determined in the analysis. Of them, 71 are adolescent girls, 47 are between 19 to 25 years of age, 31 are between 26 and 35 and the remaining 4 are older.

According to the NGO BRAC, the number of victims mentioned in these cases stands at 12,324. This figure includes men, women and children. In this time span, 7,710 persons have been rescued and brought back to the country. Most of the human trafficking victims from Bangladesh are taken to India and the Middle East.

Home minister Asaduzzaman told Prothom Alo that the police are raiding the homes of those involved in human trafficking to India.

(SAM)