The incredible feat of a brave mother

We are astonished by the bravery of a mother of a teenage girl who, according to a report published yesterday, willingly got herself trafficked to India by the same trafficking gang that had tricked her 17-year-old daughter into travelling to that country, only to sell her off to a brothel in Bihar. This was a feat of great daring on the part of the mother. At the same time, however, we cannot help but ask why she had to resort to such desperate measures. Why did she have to take such a great risk, both for herself and her daughter? Was it because she didn't receive the help she needed from the authorities to rescue her child, which forced her hand?

There is no denying the great love mothers foster for their children and the sacrifices they are willing to make for them. That was on full display in this case. However, surely the mother was aware of the danger she was putting herself into and the great odds that were against her being successful in not only escaping from the traffickers once she was all alone in their hands, but also rescuing her daughter from the brothel in India. Still, she went ahead with her plan—disguising her identity from the traffickers, fleeing from their grasp once they trafficked her to Delhi, and then making her way to Bihar and rescuing her daughter from the brothel with the help of locals.

Surely, she must have thought of and tried other alternatives, if not for herself, then to better the chances of saving her daughter from her capturers. And she must have resorted to the act of being trafficked as a last-ditch attempt once everything else had failed. But why did her other attempts fail? Why couldn't she rely on the authorities to do what she did, i.e. save her daughter from these monstrous criminals all on her own?

After the story of the mother went viral on social media, a Rab team arrested three members of the trafficking gang from Dhaka and Madaripur on Monday. Ironically, the three were previously arrested for the same offence. That should have made the job of identifying and arresting them easier. Why then did the authorities fail to do so before the mother had to put herself in such a predicament? And why were these criminals out of jail, committing the same egregious crime for which they were arrested before? Surely the crime of trafficking people is serious enough to have kept them behind bars for longer. Where and why did the state mechanism fail?

Thousands of people are trafficked out of Bangladesh every year and forced into situations that are so terrible that it would scar anyone for life. The state must have mechanisms in place that would prevent traffickers from putting people in such circumstances in the first place, as well as have the means to rescue victims of transnational trafficking as quickly as possible—as chances of rescue decrease with time. To do that, it must find out where its shortcomings are. Therefore, it is crucial for the government to investigate why the mother had to put herself in the danger that she did, and why the state couldn't offer her the help that she deserved and so desperately needed.