A 12-year-old Bangladeshi girl, who left home after failing a school exam, fearing strict parental discipline, was trafficked to Maharashtra, India, and raped by at least 200 men over the span of three months. She was rescued on July 26 during an anti-human trafficking operation in Naigaon, Vasai, with assistance from NGOs Exodus Road India Foundation and Harmony Foundation. Police have so far arrested 10 people linked to the trafficking ring. The survivor recounted that she was first taken to Nadiad in Gujarat before being forced into prostitution in Maharashtra.
This case exposes the brutality of transnational trafficking networks targeting Bangladeshi girls and the systemic failures that enable such crimes. The survivor’s journey, from leaving home due to fear, to falling prey to a woman she knew, to enduring months of sexual violence, shows the dangerous intersections of gender-based violence, child vulnerability, poverty, and cross-border criminal exploitation. Rights activists have highlighted how girls are often lured, kidnapped, or coerced into sex work, with traffickers using hormone injections to force premature physical maturity.
Feminist and child rights advocates stress that this tragedy is not isolated but part of a much larger crisis of patriarchal control, state neglect, and impunity for traffickers and buyers. Bangladesh Feminist Archives calls for urgent cross-border accountability, survivor-centered rehabilitation, and dismantling of trafficking networks. The silence and slow action from authorities on both sides of the border perpetuate a cycle where the most vulnerable children are failed first by their families, then by the state, and finally by a society that reacts only when it is too late.
Bangladesh Feminist Archives 