Dehra Dun : The skewed up sex ratio in the adjoining states of Punjab and Haryana is having a telling effect on the bordering tribal belt of Jaunsar Bawar, as girls from the region are being lured by pimps and middlemen and being sold to families in these two states. There are even fears that some of them may finally be ending up in the brothels in different parts of the country.
Money plays a major role and though many a girl may not be wanting to leave her hearth and home, but her family members, falling for the lucre of money persuade her to leave with the pimp or middlemen. More often than not the poor girl having no say of her own is forced to go away and seldom seen there after.
In fact the middlemen and pimps have a novel way of enticing families to do away with their daughters and send them away to unknown lands. One of the most prominent method that is mostly in vogue is that some girls that have been taken away from the region are brought in shining big cars and decked in jewelry that may be artificial.
But the car and shining ornaments are enough to make the parents of girls to fall into the trap of the middlemen and pimps in the hope that perhaps their daughters will also be married off in well-to-do homes and become similarly rich. Little do they know that the girls are then sold off to families in Haryana and Punjab rural areas for as much as Rs 50,000 to Rs one lakh depending upon their looks.
In quite a few cases the girls are them sold off to pimps after using them for a couple of years and the price given for them is got back. What happens to the girl later is not their worry. But there are quite a few instances where the girls are kept as daughters-in-law of the house, but are seldom allowed to return to their families back home in the fear that they may never come back.
The reason for this is mostly because the girls are lured by the shining cars and ornaments, but they actually never get to possess any of these. Most of the families that buy these girls are poor class farmers in the rural areas of Punjab and Haryana and are mostly on a hand-to-mouth living and the girls have to normally sweat it out in the fields to help the family kitty.
A journalist with over 40 years of experience, Jagdish Bhatt was Editor, Hill Post (Uttarakhand).
Jagdish had worked with India’s leading English dailies, which include Times of India, Indian Express, Pioneer and several other reputed publications. A highly acclaimed journalist, he was a recipient of many awards
Jagdish Bhatt, aged 72, breathed his last on 28th August 2021 at his Dehradun residence.
