Two Nepali nationals, both females, who had been held captive in Kerala, India, for almost three months have been repatriated home safely and are currently undergoing rehabilitation.

The two victims were lured with promises of lucrative jobs in Kuwait and Oman by agents in Nepal. The agents after facilitating them in obtaining their documents from Nepal, asked them to travel to India for their onward journey to Oman. Further, they were taken to Kochi from New Delhi via train.

Upon reaching Kochi, the girls were accommodated in a hotel. On the day of their travel to Oman, they were taught to lie to authorities about their travel plans – advising them to say they were on their way to Nepal via Colombo, Sri Lanka. The airport authorities, being suspicious, detained them at the airport. Post this, the traffickers confined them in a hotel room while they began to prepare new documents. The girls were also coerced into falsely informing their families that they were already in Oman, and were kept in a pitiable condition, denying them food, or letting them out of the room. A second attempt to send them to Oman was unsuccessful, and they were detained at the airport yet again as they were short of documents required for travelling.

The traffickers, now furious, locked them up in another hotel room. Meanwhile, the girls requested they be sent back home – a request they denied, stating “significant investments had been made on them”. However, after being held captive for about two months, the victims realised they may never leave for Oman, and asked their family members to seek help. The case was received by AHTU, Kathmandu, and later, with the help of the Embassy of Nepal, New Delhi, KIN India and with the assistance of Kerala Police, the victims were rescued on 24th February 2024. They were brought to Delhi from Kerala by Naveen Joshi and Ashvina Basnet, both representatives of KIN India. According to Ashvina, the traffickers were successful in trafficking three people as they were initially a group of five (four females and one female). She added that agents are able to capitalise on certain socio-economic conditions of the victim’s family. In this case, the victims were heading to Oman to pay off their families’ debt. Furthermore Naveen stated that “such cases of human trafficking still exist in large numbers, and given the complexities of the situation, requires proactive solutions.”