Haryana bachelors 'buy' Sikkim brides

CHANDIGARH: Haryana's skewed sex ratio, which has increasingly prompted boys to marry girls from outside the state, has now led to trafficking of women from as far as Sikkim. With the arrest of a woman on Thursday, the police claim to have smashed a trafficking ring. Police said on Saturday that they rescued a girl from Sikkim, ''sold'' for Rs 50,000 in Jhajjar.


According to Haryana police sources, the arrested woman, Anita Vishwakarma, has told Sikkim police that she had been sold for Rs 1 lakh to a Haryana boy, and then she allegedly became part of the trafficking ring.

Investigators said Anita and her husband, Rajender Singh, allegedly started luring the girls away on the promise of finding jobs for them in Haryana, where they found a growing army of bachelors desperate to get brides due to a skewed sex ratio.
The girls are introduced as brides in the villages. And, understanding the difficulties in finding brides for boys, villagers don't object to such alliances, police said.

According to an FIR lodged in the Singtam police station of Sikkim, Anita had taken a 15-year-old girl for work to Delhi on January 8 this year promising her a monthly salary of Rs 5,000. ''Anita gave the girl's family an advance of Rs 5,000,'' said Mandeep Singh Tuli, SP, East Sikkim. In a complaint to the police, the girl's father Chandra Bahadur Bhujel alleged that Anita had handed over the girl to her husband, Rajender Singh, at New Delhi. Singh then sold the minor to a man in Jhajjar for Rs 50,000, Bhujel alleged.

The girl somehow managed to call a villager at Bardand and informed him about her plight. ''When a family member of girl confronted Anita, she told them that the girl was pregnant,'' said Inspector Chundi Bhutia, in charge of Singtam police station. A case under section 5(c) of Immoral Trafficking (Prevention) Act 1956 has been registered against Anita. Efforts are on to rescue the girl, said the police officer.

According to police sources, Anita also allegedly tried to sell 18-year-old Rimseema Lohar from Pamfok,under Namthang constituency in South Sikkim, earlier this month. The accused had taken the girl to Delhi on the same pretext of employment. It is alleged Anita took the girl directly to Jhajjar and tried to sell her for Rs 50,000. However, Rimseema managed to alert her family members, who rushed to Haryana and she was able to return home safely, said police sources.