‘I trusted him’: human trafficking surges in cyclone-hit east India
Poverty-stricken women and girls are being tricked and abducted in West Bengal
Anima was just 13 when the traffickers came for her.
It began gently at first, as a romantic relationship with Rubik, an older man from out of town. He had travelled for work to the area where she lived, in India’s Sundarbans, a unique landscape of rivers, mud flats, islands and the world’s largest mangrove forest, located in West Bengal. He had flattered her, romanced her and then suggested marriage, even meeting her parents.