It was a small piece of paper that kept them in bondage for years. But as the 20 girls walk free from this circus company, they will begin new lives.
Nepali girls who were rescued from circus recount their years of ordeal mostly isolated and confined to tents
AKOLA: It was a small piece of paper that kept them in bondage for years. But as the 20 girls walk free from this circus company, they will begin new lives.
“I want to go home,” insists Junu, 18, sheepishly. “It’s been a long time I have not met my parents,” she mumbles, her left arm in a plaster. It pains, but it’s much subdued after her rescue Friday.
On that morning, child rights activists from Nepal and India coordinated a raid on Raj Mahal circus at Akola and set them free. It isn’t unusual for these girls to suffer fractures. From childhood, they’ve been trained to play with fire and risk their lives every day, all for entertainment. Despite injuries, they have to take part in circus activities.
Junu and 20 other girls, 13 of them from Nepal and under 18 years, now want to return homes in Assam and Nepal, tired of the endless procedures which is an ordeal in itself. “We’ll send them back within a day or two.Procedures do take time, but we’ll ensure that they are safe,” Akola collector Shrikar Pardesi told DNA Saturday.
Junu, Goma, Priya, Adi, Sugu - and a number of other girls - were ‘bought’ by the circus from their parents after making them sign an agreement which was illegal and inhuman. Each girl, the one-page agreement says, was to receive training for between 10 and 15 years. The first party (the circus company) was to pay Rs 4,000 to the second party ( the parents) as an “advance adjustable from the salary of the daughter.” Not a single girl ever got any salary, not even a promised pocket money of Rs 100 a month.
Abject poverty and desperation are among the major push factors for the girls to be lured into the circus, says Shailaja CM of the Nepal chapter of the UK-based charity, the Esther Benjamins Trust. “They are normally lured into a job trap.” But a few of them came on their own. “I was fascinated by the circus when I first saw it with my uncle,” said Priya, 19, who is from Assam.”I don’t wish to work here.”
“Most girls are picked up when they were five or six years by agents and sent to the circus, where their average working life is 12-15 years. Then, as some cases point out, they are dumped or sold into flesh trade.”
Behind the scenes at the circus, it was a different reality.”We were confined to a small tent, where we ate and slept. There were no fans or cooler; the animals got a better deal than us,” one of the girls was quoted as saying in her statement to the labour officials.
“Many of those freed have had no formal education and no idea of the outside world,” says Nandita Rao, legal adviser to Child Line. The police have since booked the manager of the circus under relevant sections of IPC, Child Labour Act and Bonded Labour Act and will file an FIR against the owner of the company, identified as Fatteh Khan, a politician. Khan runs 11 more circuses.
Post-rescue, the younger girls have been sent to a remand home in Amravati, while seven others were shifted to a women’s hostel in Akola.
Shailaja says,”We’ve rescued about 250 so far in over 40 operations all over the country,” She says life won’t be easy for the rescued girls. Many suffer from tuberculosis. None of them know what to do with their lives. They’ve learnt only the skills of performing in a circus — from jugglery to dance.
h_jaideep@dnaindia.net
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