While visiting Gaighat Bazaar in Udayapur district of eastern Nepal, Elisa (name changed) went to a restaurant for a snack. The restaurant owner, whom she knew from her village, greeted her warmly. Anil Sewa, the owner of Brothers Restaurant, asked for her mobile number and Facebook ID. “I gave him my number and Facebook ID and went home,” says Elisa. “A few days later, he messaged me and said, ‘When you come to the market, come to my restaurant for a snack. I have a secret to tell you’.”

Elisa cannot remember the exact date but recalls it was around June/July when she visited Brothers Restaurant for work. She says, “When I met him and asked, 'What's the secret, Dada (elder brother)?' he replied, 'Sometimes interesting customers come to my restaurant. If you have fun with them, you can enjoy good food and earn money too’.”

She also asked the hotel owner what kind of work it was. The owner said it wasn't difficult work. It was about ‘eating, drinking, and having fun. “It sounded easy, and I needed money. So, I was tempted and agreed to it.”

The next day around 11 am, Sewa called Elisa and asked her to come. “When I went there, he made me sit in a room with an unknown man, probably around 50 years old,” Elisa says. “The man ordered beer, cigarettes and snacks, and offered me some too.”

Having seen her parents fight daily due to alcoholism, Elisa had become addicted to drugs at the age of eight due to peer pressure. Therefore, she didn't refuse the beer and cigarettes. She says that while they were eating, the man made a sexual advance, which she rejected. But the man didn't stop. “I told him I had never done such a thing before, but he didn't listen and started forcing himself on me, saying that he had paid the hotel owner for this,” she said tearfully. “I was scared. The man was much older than me and I resisted but in vain.”

Elisa fainted. She says that when she regained consciousness, she was naked, and the man was sleeping naked on the bed. She got dressed and went downstairs to meet the hotel owner and told him about the abuse. But the hotel owner gave her 1,000 rupees, saying it was her ‘earning’ for the day.

Elisa was furious. "I was so angry. How could someone I knew do this to me?” she says. “I was also scared that someone else might find out what happened with me.”

Hotel owner Sewa had used Facebook Messenger to lure Elisa, trafficked her, forced her into prostitution, and she had been raped. But out of fear, she did not report the crime.

The hotel owner had lured Elisa with promises, knowing full well about her weak family and financial situation. “He told me, ‘You won't find such work anywhere else. Look, you earned a thousand rupees in less than two hours. If a better customer comes, you'll earn even more. Then, you can buy whatever you want with that money’, he tempted me,” she recalls. “I didn't say anything. He said, ‘I'll call you when a good customer comes’, and I went home without saying anything.”

Some hotels and restaurants in urban areas are found to have forced minors like Elisa into sex work under the guise of entertaining customers. According to the police, most of these girls are between ages 13-19. In her statement to the police, Elisa revealed that the hotel owner, Sewa, had also made other women engage with customers. However, in her court statement, Sewa clarified that he had never had any physical relationship with her and had never made such a proposal.

Elisa was told by the hotel owner in Gaighat that the more people she had physical relations with, the more money she would get. She was paid accordingly. “I used to get 1,000 rupees for having physical relations with one person and 3,000 rupees if I had such relations with two persons,” says Elisa. “Since I could earn more by doing it with more people, I would sleep with two or three people a day.”

She admits that due to her financial need, she was willing to have physical relations with anyone. She says that she would get extra money if she could make the customer happy.

In his statement to the police, restaurant owner Sewa admitted that he would call Elisa when customers wanted to have fun and engage in physical contact. He said that he would take 2,000 rupees from the customer and keep half of it for himself, giving the other half to Elisa.

SP Gautam Mishra, the then Information Officer of Nepal Police's Human Trafficking Investigation Bureau, says that girls from poor families and broken homes are often lured into prostitution with promises of work. Mishra said that the operators themselves trap these girls in massage centers, spas, parlors and restaurants, promising them good jobs.

He said that social media has made it easier for girls to be trafficked. Mishra says that girls are lured and sexually exploited through TikTok, Facebook and Viber, and through online advertisements promising employment.

According to him, children and adolescents are forced into the sex trade through fear and intimidation, and are used to perform obscene acts on video for customers through various apps like strip chat, free live sex cam, and adult chat.

Mishra said that groups are created on Facebook, WhatsApp, and other platforms, and girls are sent to the places specified by the customers who pay.

Lured with the promise of work and raped

Apsara (name changed), a 17-year-old girl from near Butwal, received a mobile number from an unknown person on TikTok. The person who sent the number from a TikTok account named Kelvin James was Resham Gurung from Gorkha, who lived in Tokha, Kathmandu.

After asking why he sent the number, Resham replied, “If you need a job, contact me.” Apsara still remembers saying, “I will not work right now.” Resham assured her that the massage parlor job paid 10,000 rupees per month with a promise of a future raise.
Resham also asked for Apsara's Facebook ID, and they started chatting daily. One day, Resham said, “If you don't want a parlor job, it's okay. I need someone to work at my house. You're like my sister, and I'll take good care of you. Don't be afraid to come to Kathmandu.”

When she said she didn't have the money to come to Kathmandu, Resham sent her 8,000 rupees as travel expenses. On her first day in Kathmandu, she was raped.

“On the very day I got off the bus, he took me home. While changing my clothes after eating, he knocked on the door,” she says. “When I opened the door, he forced himself on me, saying he would sleep with me. When I resisted, he made a video and threatened to post it online.”

Frightened by threat, Apsara was forced to comply with Resham. In her statement to the police, she said that after the rape, Resham brought a contraceptive from a nearby medical store and forced her to take it, scolding her when she refused.

Resham's flat was home to his paralyzed mother and postpartum wife. Apsara stayed there for a month, taking care of them, and during this time, she was raped three times, as she revealed in her police statement.

After a month, Resham put her to work at his own Sunflower Wellness Spa in Gongabu. “Although it was called a massage parlor, I had to have sexual relations with the customers and engage in sexual activities to please them,” she says. She faced harassment and abuse at the spa.

According to the police, Resham initially confessed to the charges after his arrest. However, the charge sheet states that he later retracted his statement. Quoting him, the charge sheet states, “When the police interrogated me for the first time after my arrest, I said those things. I don't remember now.”

Using the victim to find other girls

Resham used Apsara to bring other girls to Kathmandu. After working for a few months, Resham threatened her, saying, “Call another friend from your village, or I'll make your video go viral.” Out of fear, she called her friend Ayusha (name changed) to Kathmandu.

“Out of fear, I called my 17-year-old classmate Ayusha, telling her there was a good job in Kathmandu,” said Apsara. Ayusha, who didn't receive much love and affection from her father after her mother left and her father remarried, came to Kathmandu and faced the same fate as Apsara.

Resham knew Makhmali Maya Syangtan, the owner of A-One Spa in Thamel. While visiting Resham's spa, she met Apsara and Ayusha. Afterward, they left Resham's spa and started working at A-One.

Apsara said that Makhmali, like Resham, would take 1,000 rupees for each sexual encounter with a customer, keeping 500 for herself and giving 500 to them.

Both Apsara and Ayusha, while working at A-One, were rescued by a team deployed by the Human Trafficking Investigation Bureau on the evening of May 19, 2024. The police filed a case against Resham in the Kathmandu District Court for human trafficking and rape. Both Apsara and Ayusha are currently in a safe house. According to Mishra, the bureau's information officer, although both girls' families have been informed, they have not come to take them back, and the girls have also refused to go home.

Just as Resham had used Apsara to bring Ayusha, Sewa and Satish Kumar Yadav had used Elisa to bring another girl from Gaighat. On September 8, 2023, Yadav, who had been staying with Elisa at Sewa's hotel, took her to Lahan, Siraha, the next day. When Elisa said she would only go to Lahan if Sewa went, Yadav gave her money for the bus fare and they went to Lahan on a scooter.

Sewa told the police in his statement that Yadav had agreed to pay for the hotel expenses in Lahan and had said he would arrange for a fee of 5,000 rupees for one night.

On the night of September 9, 2023, Yadav and Elisa were in one room and Sewa in another room at a hotel in Lahan. On the afternoon of September 10, 2023, when Yadav saw Elisa chatting with a friend on Facebook Messenger, he pressured her to call her friend. According to Sewa's statement to the police, Yadav had told Elisa's friend, “Come to Lahan, I'll give you as much money as you want.”

However, when she said she didn't have the bus fare, Yadav went to Gaighat on a motorcycle. While returning to Lahan with her, the police at the Jaljale checkpoint stopped their motorcycle and questioned them. When the girl said that she did not know Yadav and that her friend had told her she could earn some money by staying at a hotel for a while, Yadav was arrested. After Yadav's arrest, the police arrested Sewa on September 13, 2023, and filed a human trafficking case against him in the Udayapur District Court.

Elisa's friend's father has filed another human trafficking case against Elisa, Yadav and Sewa. These cases are pending in court.

Trafficking to India

Girls are also being trafficked to India through online contacts. There has been an increase in gangs luring girls with promises of employment on social media and then trafficking them. Binod Pokharel, the program coordinator of Maiti Nepal, Biratnagar, said that rural girls are particularly vulnerable to such traps.

“They lure simple village girls with promises of attractive salaries and take them away. It has been found that they are forced into prostitution in India,” said Pokharel. “These trafficking gangs have been found to use social media, Viber and WhatsApp the most.”

Gitanjali Sharma of Maiti Nepal shared that in July/August alone, they rescued and brought back a 13-year-old girl who had been trafficked to India after getting acquainted with a person through Facebook.

Human trafficking and smuggling is a global and multifaceted problem. Like the illegal trade in weapons and drugs, human trafficking and smuggling has become a thriving business operated by international criminal organizations worldwide. Social analyst Bigyan Luintel states that this crime has become widespread because it is less risky and more profitable compared to other crimes.

Social media has further facilitated this. "The pursuit of urban lifestyles, including commercial sex work, cheap labor, and easy living, has become a pull factor for trafficking," says Luintel. "Children in local environments are influenced by poverty, illiteracy, unemployment, lack of income-generating opportunities, and social insecurity."

Mishra said that in the fiscal year 2022/23, the bureau raided hotels, restaurants, and massage parlors 18 times and rescued 61 girls who were forced into risky work. Of these, only 14 were taken by their families, and the rest are still in safe houses.

Mishra said that the bureau has been posting various messages on social media about how to protect oneself from human trafficking through social media. He suggests not chatting with strangers on social media, not being lured by anyone's promises, not sharing personal information on social media, not trusting anyone easily, and consulting with family members if someone makes any proposal.

(This investigative report was prepared through the NIMJN fellowship supported by the Australian Aid.  All rights reserved with the author and publisher.)

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