Four boys, who were trafficked to India, pose with their relatives on their arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on Wednesday with the help of the Bangladesh Women Lawyers’ Association. — New Age photo

Four Bangladeshi boys were sent back to Bangladesh from India on Wednesday.
They had been trafficked from Dhaka International Airport in 2011 and forced to beg at the Nizamuddin Dargah in New Delhi.
The four, Al Amin, Akash, Rafiqul and Hira are all between 13 and 14 years old. They are from Savar, Uttara, Netrokona and Mymensingh.
The boys were rescued in a collaborative affair by Butterflies, an Indian NGO that works with street children and the Bangladesh National Women Lawyer’s Association.
An official of the BNWLA said that in March 2011, a trafficker named Jewel had trafficked the victims to India from the Dhaka International Airport area.
Jewel had told the lawyers association said that by giving them drugs, he got the street children to do various types of misdeeds.
After the boys were sent to India, Al Amin’s mother complained at BNWLA office, reporting her missing.
On November 2011, BNWLA with the help of Airport Police Station eventually arrested Jewel.
BNWLA, with the help of Butterflies, then rescued the boys from Nazimuddin Dargah were they were in safe custody for 10 months.
Executive director of BNWLA, Salma Ali said the ‘Indian government took the initiative and sent the boys back with their own finance. This is a good sign for bilateral agreements and initiatives regarding the repatriation of trafficked victims’.
Every year many Bangladeshi girls are trafficked into the red-light districts of Indian cities and it is a challenge to rehabilitate and provide employment to them after their return, she added.