New Delhi: A 25-year-old Ugandan woman, who was tricked into travelling to Delhi for a sales job, found herself entangled in a sex racket upon landing in the national capital. However, she managed to escape from the clutches of her traffickers on August 11, when, for the first time, she was asked to go out to attend to a client.
Zendaya*, along with social worker Nirmala B. Walter from Manobal NGO, who helped rescue her, spent a whole day dealing with the Delhi Police which didn’t seem interested in pursuing the case. The woman said she finally got her handler arrested and her documents recovered from the gang.
It was in July 2022 when Zendaya was cajoled into travelling to New Delhi by her high-school friend Judith, who told her that a high-paying job in India was arranged for her through another Ugandan woman named Jennifer.
Zendaya, who is a single mother of two kids, thought that this job was the only way by which she could earn for herself and the kids.
“When you are a single mother with two kids, living in abject poverty with no jobs in your country, you just want to grab any opportunity that comes your way. It doesn’t matter even if you have to work overseas, leave behind your kids and an ailing, old mother. And, in my case, I trusted a woman who was a senior from my high school, not any random person,” Zendaya told this reporter.
In Uganda, more than 98% victims of human trafficking are single mothers. This information was revealed recently by Agnes Igoye, deputy chair of National Prevention of Trafficking in Person at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Uganda, who further said that between January and June 2022, more than a thousand victims of trafficking were registered but most of them were found to be single mothers.
Zendaya didn’t have a passport nor did she have the money to travel to India, so Jennifer quickly arranged the passport and a business visa for her.
“I landed in New Delhi on July 17, 2022 from where I was picked up by Jennifer and her friend Vicky at 2 am. From the airport, I was taken to her house in Mohan Garden area where Jennifer confiscated my passport, visa and the phone immediately, and said that I will only get them back after I pay her an amount of Rs 6 lakh, the cost which she said she bore for my passport, visa and travel,” Zendaya said.
She goes on: “She (Jennifer) told me that I have to sleep with men to enable me to pay her all the money she was demanding or else I will die in India and never go back. I resisted and said that Judith had promised me a sales job in a shop, and not sex work. So I requested her to make me speak with my friend first.”
Jennifer decided to connect her to Judith over a WhatsApp call, but when Zendaya confronted her she sniggered at her and told her she shouldn’t “joke about such things”. “She too said I might never be able to go back to my country and get arrested here if I didn’t do what Jennifer asked me,” Zendaya said, adding that she was shocked to see that Judith was also an accomplice.
The realisation that her friend had sold her and there was no escape from this had dawned upon Zendaya.
After being confined for three days, Jennifer took her to a handler named Natasha in Greater Noida and gave her a new phone with an Indian SIM card.
“Then Natasha downloaded different dating apps on my phone, such as Hi5, Badoo, Mingle2, Tinder, etc. They then set up my dating profile, describing me as a student from Amity University who was looking for a hook up, posting my local phone number and address,” she said.
Zendaya said she was made to constantly chat with men on these apps for almost 24 hours a day in order to get more clients home. Once a client was convinced to come, she would send him the rate card, negotiate the “best rate”, call him home and take the payment either in cash or on the Paytm app scanner. However, Zendaya was never allowed to keep a single penny from her earnings.
“I always had to immediately handover the money to Natasha,” she said.
Natasha used to control Zendaya’s life in every way, and even restrict her from keeping her phone on silent mode or low volume or even locking her bedroom. Zendaya would be allowed to sleep only for an hour and eat just one meal every day, which always used to consist of two eggs and some chips.
“So I started to fall sick and was inactive and slow at work,” she added.
Natasha, whose job was to manage Zendaya and all her payments, was also into witchcraft, she said.
“She would often threaten me that if I ever escape, she would use black magic to kill me, in which she was trained. She would even force me to apply some grey-coloured ‘magic paste’ in my private parts saying it will attract many more clients and more clients meant more money.”
When this reporter visited her place, she found huge amounts of salt powder lying on the floor, on all the corners of Natasha’s room as if it was meant “to forbid someone from entering”. Also, there were many suspicious items that hinted at sorcery being practised in the room. The reporter also found the ‘magic paste’ box which Zendaya talked about.
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‘The day I escaped’
One day, Zendaya somehow managed to reconnect with her old ‘Ugandan Prayer Group’ on WhatsApp where she narrated her situation and sought immediate help for rescue. In the group, there were a few social workers and pastors who immediately sent an SOS message to many ‘Delhi prayer groups’ on WhatsApp. Somehow this message reached Walter from Manobal NGO, which rescues victims of human trafficking.
Soon, Walter got in touch with Zendaya on the messaging app and started planning the rescue operation with her. Zendaya told her that she would only be allowed to leave the house if a client offered her an exceptionally “high price” for meeting him at his chosen location.
So, in the next few days, Zendaya finally found a client who was from Delhi and was ready to pay a hefty amount. On August 11, the client called her to a hotel at Safdarjung Enclave.
Jennifer and Natasha were happy that Zendaya had managed to find a “wealthy client” and allowed her to leave the house. Zendaya said that it was the first time she had stepped out from the clutches of her abusers ever since she had landed in Delhi.
Immediately after leaving the Noida house, Zendaya contacted Walter who arrived with a team at the location and rescued her. Then, they went straight to the Safdarjung police station to file a first information report (FIR) against the traffickers.
However, according to multiple witnesses present, the police officers were reluctant to file an FIR “as no incident had taken place” in their jurisdiction. After the police refused to file an FIR, they were repeatedly requested to at least file a daily diary entry or a zero FIR so that Zendaya’s medical could be done and she could be provided a shelter home. Such formalities are mandatory before a survivor in India can be relocated to a shelter home.
Finding no help at the police station, Walter dialed 112 helpline number from the compound of the police station to seek support for the rescued woman. The call was received by an official at the police station itself who then agreed to file a complaint after hours of persuasion.
“Why did I have to dial 112 helpline from inside a police station to seek help for a woman in need of shelter and medical check up? Why can’t the police be sensitive when it comes to such trafficking cases?” Walter told this reporter.
The Wire tried to contact senior police officials in the Delhi Police, including ACP V.K.P.S. Yadav of Safdarjung Enclave, on this matter, however, there was no response from any of them.
What’s worse, after the survivor Zendaya provided the Delhi location of Jennifer to the police, it showed no interest in raiding the location and arresting her.
It was 2 am in the morning on August 12 when the Delhi Police decided to leave for Greater Noida police station so that they could transfer the case to them. Later, a raid took place at Natasha’s flat where Zendaya had earlier been confined. Zendaya’s passport was recovered from her handler Natasha and she was taken into custody, but Jennifer still remains at large.
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‘Nearly 24 hours of struggle’
The rescue team had now spent over 13 hours with the police in Delhi and Noida since Zendaya was rescued, and at 7 am in the morning they came back to Delhi. The struggle didn’t end there.
“It’s when ACP V.K.P.S. Yadav intervened in the matter that the case finally got some traction. Her MLC (medico-legal case) was finally done and she was provided a shelter home,” said Walter of Manobal NGO.
Although Zendaya finally found a shelter home and one of the accomplices was arrested, the entire process took 24 hours. While she is happy that she finally got rescued, she wants the police to arrest Jennifer and Judith, while also demanding compensation for the suffering she went through for almost a month.
Zendaya completed one month in India on August 17.
“I hope I make it home before the second birthday of my son on August 27. I am sure he and my mom have so many questions about my sudden disappearance…Please pray for me,” Zendaya told this reporter as she wrapped the Bible in her arms.
*The name of the survivor has been changed to protect her identity.
Pari Saikia is a human trafficking journalist based in New Delhi.
Featured image: Reuters
This article was first published on The Wire.