Bengaluru: It’s a story of grit in the face of inhuman traffickers preying on women for a living. Like hundreds of young girls who fall into the clutches of racketeers running the flesh trade, a 30-year-old woman from Kolkata, brought to the city on the pretext of being made a receptionist, too found herself dragged into it, first as a bartender and then an escort.
But she managed to escape is now hoping to put them behind bars. Deepika Roy (name changed), a B. Com graduate from Kolkata, came to the city on September 13 by train leaving her mother-in-law to look after her 10 year-old son and paralyzed husband after she was offered a receptionist’s job in a hotel in the Majestic on a salary of Rs 30,000 a month.
She was met by one Murthy and taken to an apartment in Shakthi Gardens in Kalyan Nagar where she was asked to submit all her original certificates and made to sign on some white sheets of paper . A formal interview followed and she was lodged with a few other girls in a hostel-like environment.
“It was only later I realized that the job was of a bartender and not a receptionist. But as I had a family back home, I thought I would continue working till I got a new job,” says Deepika.
But a couple of weeks into her new job, she was asked to dress up ‘impressively’ and stand along with a group of girls in the bar lounge of the hotel in the Majestic area. “Customers threw money on all the girls for each song that was played at the bar” recounts the woman, who gradually realised she was caught in a prostitution racket.
Her worst fears came true when Murthy forced her to escort a customer to a lodge on Mysore Road and she was raped by two customers. “Later, there was an autorickshaw waiting for me . I pleaded with the driver to take me to a police station, but he seemed to be an accomplice of Murthy.”
The next day Deepika was asked to escort another customer. This time she jumped out of the moving auto in the heavily crowded Majestic area, injuring her leg and rushed to the Cottonpet police station. But to her frustration, she was told to go instead to the Chandra Layout police station that covered Kalyan Nagar .
“Hearing my complaints, the police summoned Murthy, who gave an officer a bribe of Rs 15,000 in front of me to take me back. He told them I was a drunk and a bartending girl who was blackmailing him for more money.
A woman constable roughed me up at the station and sent me back with Murthy saying he would give me Rs 9000 to return to Kolkata. The cops filed an NCR, got my thumb impression on a paper with some Kannada writng on it and sent me away,” the woman recalls bitterly.
Afraid that she would cause more trouble, Murthy now decided to send her on a bus to Mumbai with an escort. Still determind to get away, Deepika got her chance, when the bus stopped for a recess and her companion went out to relieve himself.
She escaped and boarded a bus back to the city. Although she made it to the city railway station to get a train to Kolkata , she found she had no money and so called a women’s helpline.
Now the woman is in the care of an NGO, Bharathiya Mahila Samrakshana Sangha and plans to the meet the police commissioner.
Said a Chandra Layout cop, “We have registered an NCR against her. She was drunk when she came to the police station and we subjected her to a medical examination.
She creates a ruckus where she works too. Her employers claim she slapped customers and we have asked for the CCTV footage.”
