Open mic for Bride trafficking survivors held in DLSA Mewat

For the first time in Haryana an open Mike session was held in collaboration of EMPOWER PEOPLE and DLSA Mewat in which a representation of survivors of bride trafficking came to address the stake holders comprising officials from judiciary, Police and media. The open mic session was an attempt to provide organic story version of survivors which can be used for sensitization and awareness in the society. This event was possible because of pro-active and enthusiastic CJM cum secretary DLSA Sh. Narendra sigh who chaired the event. Survivors and community workers who work with EMPOWER PEOPLE share their own life stories and complaint about the discrimination they faced in their lives.

​They said after living here for long time and having children with local men we are still not respectable persons of the society. People used to abuse and discriminate us on the basis of our origin. One of the survivor Sabila said that we belongs to India and we have right to assess all the facilities provided by Indian government but officials usually ignore us because they feel we have no place in the society.
Another survivor Saleena said that we all are organizing ourself to combat discrimination with us. She urge the administration that they should do something for the those women who were trafficked in the past and living here with children. She wanted the stakeholders to ensure their participation in benefiting government schemes at the local level.
They also requested police officials to make efforts for stopping bride trafficking and rescue and rehabilitation of newly arrived girls.
CJM sh. Narendra Singh and other officials assured them to assist and support in getting their rights.
As mentioned earlier there were many survivors and from all of these survivors we have a short story of few survivors for our society.
First Survivor: - Her name is Sabila, she was from Andhra Pradesh. As per our information she was brought in Mewat at the age of 12. And she was sold two to three times after that. The person she was last sold to was mentally retarded. She has been living with the same person for several years. When she gave a birth to a child, her in-laws sold her two to three times to other parties but she somehow managed to escape from those villages and came back to her mentally retarded husband and lives with all the tortures from all her in-laws to date. At present she has 9 kids from which 6 of them are married and 3 are not.
Second Survivor: - Her name is Saleena, she was from Assam. As per our information she was brought in Mewat at the age of 12 or 13. And she was sold to a driver for Rs. 8000/-. She was happy with her husband and never had any problem. But as her husband died in a road accident in 2014, her torturing life was started by her in-laws. She was abused many times and called by low category name. And till date she is suffering all the torturing. She has 4 daughters from which 2 are married and 2 are not.
Third Survivor: - Her name is Kamla, she was from Bihar. As per our information she was brought in Mewat at the age of 14. And she was sold two to three times after that. Her husband died three years ago after which she was thrown out of the house and village. And not only that the in-laws seized all her documents like Aadhar card, ID card (Election Card), Ration card and other documents. And at present she stays beside the road in a hut.
After all the interaction from each of the stake holders, CJM gave a final concluding speech in which he stated that, the Bride Trafficking is going on through many years and we have never looked upon it as a problem but in fact there is the major problem which we should take as the biggest national issue. And he suggested all the stake holders to look into the same seriously and take necessary steps to solve it.