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Dubai: Missing girl rescued by a journalist
May 2, 2005
Dubai - An Indian girl who was forced into prostitution after being brought to
Dubai to work in sales has been rescued. A journalist from a local
English-language newspaper rescued Priya yesterday from an apartment in Deira.
“Initially they did not open the door but we had to force them to,” said the
reporter.
“We went into the balcony and found several girls there. We identified Priya
who immediately gathered her passport and clothes and we fled the place.”
The girl was taken to the Indian Consulate.
“They forced me into prostitution,” Priya said after she was rescued, according
to a friend.
“I was beaten up several times and finally had to give in to their demands. We
were being shifted to a different flat every two days. The customers used to
pay dhs50, which the agents used to collect. It was a real hell out there.”
“I just want to return home and can earn my living working as a house maid.”
Priya’s family have not heard from her for more than a year.
Priya’s father has been ill, so the family relies on the mother’s income of
just 1,000 rupees a month (dhs84).
Hoping for a better life for their daughter, they managed to scrape together
enough money to pay an agent to get her a job in Dubai.
“The agent who arranged the visa for our daughter demanded rupees 75,000
(dhs6,306) and since we did not have that much money we had to mortgage the
only house we had,” she said.
Priya managed to send home about dhs1,000 when she first arrived in the UAE,
which the family used to pay off some of their debt to the agent.
But after three months their daughter disappeared.
Five months ago the mother got a phone call from Priya, and put her in touch
with Kiran, a friend in Dubai who had been trying to trace her .
“For the first three months I was told the shop in which I am going to work is
still being set up,” she is reported to have told Kiran.
“They gave me some money to be sent home. But after that they forced me into
prostitution. All my efforts to protest and stay away failed. I somehow need to
get back home,” she told him.
When she refused to cooperate, she was locked in an apartment in Deira, the man
said.
The family have written to the Indian Consulate here, but have not yet had a
reply.
Kiran too says he has contacted the Indian authorities in Dubai, without
success.
“I am still waiting for the authorities to act. I knew the place where she was
kept. They could have even moved her from that building now,” he said. No one
at the Indian Consulate was available to comment.
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