The big, booming business of child-bride trafficking in Gujarat

Child-bride trafficking in Gujarat’s Ahmedabad district

The moment Hema Salaat (first name changed to protect identity), 13, stepped into the car, she knew her life had changed forever. Over the next 48 hours, she was raped and physically assaulted by Ashok Patel, whom she still calls bhai. His wife, Renuka, stood by, encouraging her husband to torture her into submission. Hema was about to be sold into what is a combination of slavery and rape, to a man many decades her senior.

In what was a departure from the norm, the Gujarat police immediately investigated a missing complaint filed by her parents, and she was rescued. Officers usually don’t snap into action, assuming that teens elope out of choice. In Hema’s case, what caught their attention was the presence of a woman. Their action also led to the freeing of Priya Patni (first name changed), 14, another child-bride victim who had been kidnapped 11 months earlier. She had been sold for ₹3 lakh, while a go-between got ₹5,000.

The police have tracked down six of the alleged perpetrators, but Hema and Priya are likely one of many teens from impoverished, so-called low-caste, marginalised families, who are physically tortured and mentally broken by the cruel commerce of underage bride trafficking.

Hema’s kutcha house, a doorless structure of mud and thatched walls covered with an asbestos roof, lies on the outskirts of a village, next to a crematorium. Situated in the Ahmedabad district, her currently unemployed parents struggle to meet life’s daily needs.

On the morning of May 11, Ashok and Renuka Patel allegedly arrived at the house. They knew the family through Hema’s cousin. “Let us buy your daughter some clothes and a payal; she is just like our daughter,” Hema recalls hearing them say, through the porous walls. Caught between the excitement of new baubles and the discomfiture of going out with strangers, the decision was made for her by her parents, after the Patels made several convincing overtures.

“They said they would rent a local vehicle driven by a fellow villager. He called us close family friends, and made us believe that we could trust him and his wife,” says Devika Salaat (first name changed), Hema’s mother. She’s distraught that she fell for the ploy. “I would never have let her go with a stranger, but they told us about their sister who lived in the neighbouring village. And they seemed to be close friends of our nephew.”

The next day, the Patels, with Hema, went to the neighbouring village in a car. There, they met Parul, who they claimed was Ashok Patel’s sister. They bought clothes for Hema and dismissed the vehicle. The concerned driver called her father, and the Patels reassured him that all was well. “They said they wanted to spend some more time there, and that they would return soon. Ashok bhai said he was like her father in my absence,” says Ramesh Salaat (first name changed), Hema’s father. The family that shares one mobile phone among five members, called again, but the phone was not reachable.