New Delhi: In yet another case of human trafficking from India to West Asia, a 40-year-old man from a poor farmer family in West Bengal was taken to Saudi Arabia by an illegal recruiting agent on the pretext of being provided with a job and is now being kept in a locked room in Riyadh, along with other victims like him.
Safidul Sekh, son of Nafuruddin Sekh, a resident of Gandhina in Nadia district in West Bengal, was taken to Saudi Arabia with the promise of being provided with a job with a good salary by an illegal recruiting agent in March 2022. The agent took Rs 2 lakhs from the family for the job. On landing in Saudi Arabia, Safidul found that there was no job waiting for him and he and other victims like him were kept in a locked room for about three to four months. Later, the contractor forced Safidul and the others to work at meagre wages. However, that work also lasted for a couple of months or so. The victims are now again being kept in a locked room at a market in Riyadh where they are close to starvation.
The helpless family then went to the police station and lodged a complaint against the illegal recruiting agent, Naju Mandal. The police, however, refused to register an FIR, and instead asked the family to approach the court. Finally, on Monday, Safidul’s father Nafuruddin submitted a memorandum to the chairman of the West Bengal Migrant Labour Welfare Board in which he narrated his son’s and family’s ordeal for the last one-and-a-half years. In the memorandum, Nafuruddin sought the government’s help to bring his son back home from Riyadh.
“Due to the lack of any job in our area for several months, we faced many problems in our daily life,” Nafuruddin stated in the memorandum. “Even we could not meet two square meals a day. We were helpless to support our family. In this scenario, Naju Mandal, son of Chand Ali Mandal, a labour-broker from my neighbouring area (Nandalpur) came to my house several times.”
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According to Nafuruddin, Naju Mandal assured the family that he could send Safidul to Riyadh and “arrange a permanent job with the highest wages”. But for that, a total of Rs 2 lakhs will be required, along with necessary documents. “According to that promise, l and my son (Safidul Sekh, 40) sold a part of our immovable property and also borrowed money from others at higher interest and handed over Rs 2 lakhs to the broker Naju Mandal,” Nafuruddin stated in the memorandum.