(Representative image)

HYDERABAD: An 18-year-old girl from the city, who was trafficked to Kuwait is being subjected to torture and kept at a remote place by her employer. The girl, Malan Begum, has also fallen ill as she has been denied food and proper accommodation. Following the girl narrating her tale of woes to her family in Hyderabad on phone, her mother Rukiya Begum has sought the help of external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj to rescue her.

In a letter to the minister, Rukiya Begum of Hafeez Baba Nagar said that a couple, Tasleem Begum and her husband Nawaz, residents of Shalibanda , and one Saleem, a resident of Shaheen Nagar, had approached Malan Begum offering her a job as a beautician. She was promised a salary of 100 Kuwaiti Dirhams (Rs 22,000) per month.

According to Rukiya Begum, the agents who approached her had themselves got a passport made for her. They also allegedly got her Aadhaar card done showing her age as 22 years. The girl was taken to Kuwait on May 8, 2018, on a visit visa which will expire on July 13. After she landed in Kuwait, she was received by another agent who got her to work as a housemaid instead of a beautician.

Rukiya Begum does not know where the daughter is exactly in Kuwait but has the number from which she has been calling the family to rescue her from the clutches of her employer. The kafil (employer) is demanding that she give him Rs three lakh if she wants to leave. Malan Begum who has fallen ill in Kuwait is also not being provided any medicines.

“I contacted the agent to bring back my daughter. But he is neither cooperating nor giving me a passport copy of my daughter so that I can complain to the Ministry of External affairs and Indian Embassy in Kuwait to get her released,” Rukiya Begum said in a letter to Sushma Swaraj. MBT leader Amjed Ullah Khan has also taken up her matter with the external affairs ministry.

