'I was bought for 50,000 rupees': India's trafficked brides – in pictures

Pul has travelled 2,000km from her home in Assam, north-east India, to a small government-run shelter in another state where her daughter is waiting. Weeping, she reaches out and clutches 13-year-old Tahmina* to her. She had thought she would never see her again.

Six weeks previously, Tahmina had left her home with her elder sister and brother-in-law. She thought they were going to Delhi. Instead, she was taken to a remote village in Haryana and sold into marriage with a man almost 30 years older than her.

At a safe house run by Empower People, an anti-trafficking charity which helped reunite her and her mother, Tahmina drew a picture that revealed what she had been through.

On pink paper, she sketched stick figures travelling by bus, train and car. At the bottom, she drew herself surrounded by strange people and wrote a number: 50,000 rupees (£557), the price she was sold for.

A few weeks later, and after counselling, Tahmina feels able to talk about her experience. “My sister told me that we were going to Delhi with her husband and his friends,” she says. “They took me to Haryana and kept me in a room. Strange men were coming to see me and offering money and my own sister was outside that room knowing what was going to happen to me.”



Source: theguardian

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