Trafficking claims surface: Sylhet girls reportedly sold in Cox’s Bazar
Sylhet Bureau :
Allegations have been received that two Sylhet girls were taken to Cox’s Bazar and sold. The two girls said that they were taken there on the pretext of working in a garment factory and kept in a hotel and brutally tortured for 14 days. The two girls live in the Pirer Bazar area of Shahparan Police Station in Sylhet.
According to the two girls, when a woman from their neighbor’s house offered them work in a garment factory in Cox’s Bazar, they agreed. When they went to Cox’s Bazar with the woman on April 7, they first went to her son Emon’s house to take a bath and eat. The next day, Emon took them to a residential hotel in Cox’s Bazar on the pretext of taking them to a garment factory and left them there. When they asked why they were here, the hotel staff took them to a room and made them sit. Then they were brutally tortured there for 14 days.
Meanwhile, the parents of the girls filed a GD on behalf of their family at Shahparan Police Station on April 9. Upon learning of the matter, the woman told them to come to Sylhet to collect the GD and told her son to let them go. Then Emon let them go, saying, “I will never come to Cox’s Bazar again.” On Thursday, they left the hotel and came to Sylhet.
The girls said that during those 14 days, we could not communicate with our family in any way. We were not given phones. They were kept in the hotel day after day and were brutally tortured.
When the victim’s family members informed the police, the two girls were sent to the OCC of Sylhet Osmani Hospital for treatment.
However, the police say otherwise. Shahparan Police Station SI Sohel Chandra Sarkar said in this regard that the parents of the two girls used to torture them, keeping them in their homes. So, out of pride, they fell into the trap of the woman they knew before. I do not know whether they were taken there for work. However, regarding the brutal torture they were kept there, he said that they were tortured while being kept in a house. They were released from there and returned to Sylhet on Thursday morning.