Back in ‘lousy’ city, girl yearns for Delhi

Calcutta, Dec. 20: Yasmin Khatun, the teenager who was abducted from a village in South 24-Parganas and rescued by police from Delhi last week, was today brought to Calcutta by the CID.

But Yasmin (name changed) made it clear almost at once that she did not like being brought to Calcutta and wanted to return to her life in Delhi.

Yasmin with CID officers at Sealdah station on Monday morning. Picture by Anindya Shankar Ray

As the Tata Sumo in which she was being taken to the CID headquarters in Bhawani Bhawan left Sealdah station this morning, Yasmin complained about how dirty the city was. She had earlier said she did not want to return to her parents in Balikhali in Kakdwip subdivision.

“Dirty city,” Yasmin said in Hindi. “I don’t like it here. This city is lousy.”

As though trying to disown the life she led before being kidnapped and trafficked to Delhi, Yasmin said: “I have forgotten Bangla and I don’t want to speak that language. Why do I have to? I have no one in Bengal.”

Neither does she want to meet her parents, including her stepmother Johora Biwi who ran from pillar to post to get her back.

In fact, it was the petition that she had filed in Calcutta High Court that eventually led the court to direct the police to produce her by October 1.

The police then swung into action and managed to rescued her from the hideout of a trafficker in Delhi’s Begumpur area.

Today Yasmin said: “If Johora Biwi loved me so much then where was she when I was all alone, crying in Delhi. I have no one here. I don’t have any father.”

Tomorrow, Yasmin would be produced before a court of child welfare committee at Narendrapur where she would make a confessional statement laying bare everything she has gone through: beginning with her abduction and how she was sold off in April 2009 to how she found a “home” in New Delhi.

She will also narrate how, for her, life changed from the drudgery of living in a remote village to the comforts of having an air-conditioner in her room in a Begumpur house.

“I will speak in Hindi and tell them to help me return to Delhi. I have no feelings for my parents here. My papa and mama in Delhi have given me a new life and I just want to rush back to them,” Yasmin said.

No one knows what awaits Yasmin when a CWC court hears her out tomorrow. CID officers, however, have told her that she was likely to spend some time in the Narendrapur home run by an NGO. Yasmin said she does not mind if it is a short stay.

But she laid a condition: “My parents must not come to meet me. Only Tajmera (her younger sister) can come and I will meet her briefly,” she said. “But I want to return to Delhi soon.”

But what’s so special about Delhi, this reporter asked.

“You won’t understand,” she retorts. “The biryani from Karim’s is so good. And so are the people.” 

THE TELEGRAPH 

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