[Survivor Series] I am helping other survivors and achieving my long-lost dream of doing something meaningful

I grew up in the Basirhat region of North 24 Parganas, the youngest child in my family. My parents had such aspirations for me. My greatest dream was to pursue my education and get a degree and do something really meaningful in my life. However, we were not well off and my dreams had to go on the backburner. 

It was around the time of my older sister’s marriage that a relative of her in-laws started visiting our family frequently. He won my family’s trust and convinced me that he could help with funding my higher education and finding me a job.

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My family agreed to send me to Pune, but as soon as we reached, he sold me to a brothel. I was rescued in a month and was relieved that I was going home, but once I got there, I found that things had changed completely. 

My neighbours, my friends, and my peers at school shunned me completely. Many blamed me for everything that had happened.  But I refused to give up and reached out to an NGO in my area, where I was taught to deal with my trauma and channel my grief in a healthy manner. The NGO helped me to acquire a variety of skill sets through leadership and soft skills training. Later I joined an anti-trafficking survivor group called ‘Utthan’, which was established in 2016. 

Today, I am actively working towards abolishing trafficking from society and breaking the stigma and stereotypes associated with it that survivors have to endure. 

At Utthan, I have been involved in a lot of areas such as attending peer audits with the other survivors, conducting anti-trafficking campaigns, advocating for the Trafficking of Persons Bill, and engaging relevant stakeholders from the ministries for the same.  I have worked on the Public Interest Litigation in Maharashtra and Kolkata. Additionally, the survivors and I are utilising a phone application, which helps to seek rehabilitation services and a platform to network. 

Despite all the positive changes I tried to bring, one thing happened that shows how the system fails trafficking victims. I lodged an FIR against the trafficker and took him to court. We fought the case for six years and I tried my best to see that the culprit was put behind bars. But we lost.

I am not ready to give up and appealed to the High Court in 2017 to reconsider my case and provide me with the justice I rightly deserved. Additionally, I also understood that I was eligible to apply for victim compensation (VS). I am now helping other survivors apply for VS and training them so that they can carry forward the same mission and vision. Working at the grassroots level has put me on the path of achieving my long-lost dream of doing something meaningful.