Police ki ankhon me mein child smuggler, lekin gaonwale mujhe bhagwan samajthe the. Dada, mein bacche smuggle karta tha, ismein bahut paisa hai (Police may call me a trafficker, but I was god to the villagers. I used to traffick children. It gives good money),” says Tushar Bashar (name changed), once a child trafficker in Sandeshkhali, South 24 Parganas.

According to locals and police, he smuggled at least 50 children out of the villages in Sandeshkhali. Business was good for Tushar, a well-built man with thin moustache, till he sold one of his own relatives to the child trafficking racket and later came to know that the girl had landed into a brothel

in Delhi.

“I was full of remorse. I was repentant. I had brought the girl from my poor maternal uncle’s home with the promise that she would find a good house and paid a decent salary in Delhi. But once out of Kolkata, the agents who had taken her away could not provide any information about the girl for months and not a penny reached my uncle. Finally, I learnt that she was in a brothel. I had to leave my house as my uncle and other relatives kept visiting me and insisted on getting the girl back. This is my new address that my relatives do not know. They have lost track of me. I have also changed track to settle for other things,” says Bashar. He now works as a security guard with a well-known group in Kolkata.

... contd.