In Search Of A Better Future, Women From Bangladesh End Up Criminalised & In Indian Jails

Two hundred seventy-one under-trial foreign women and eighty-seven convicted foreign women, mostly Bangladeshis, are housed in prisons in West Bengal, accused of illegally crossing the borders and entering India.

A jail-visiting lawyer, who writes of their vulnerability and need for special attention from the justice system, explains their courage in challenging patriarchal norms and crossing borders in search of a better future, only to end up criminalised and in jail.

Kolkata: A* first crossed the Bangladesh border in 2013 and came to India when she was 16.

Many women are trafficked by an extensive network of touts or ‘dalals‘ who sell dreams of work and marriage, organise the transport and then abandon or sell them into prostitution. Hundreds of people make money at various stages of illegal border crossings.

The West Bengal police recovered A from a brothel at Sonagachi in Kolkata in 2014 and sent her back to Bangladesh, where she was in a children’s home until she made the crossing again in 2017.

In June 2015, India and Bangladesh signed a memorandum of understanding on the prevention of human trafficking, especially of women and children.