Mumbai: Trafficked woman ‘reunited’ with family by YouTubers

Hamida Bano, who left India 20 years ago in search of a job in gulf countries, had no idea that she would end up trafficked to Pakistan. Thanks to two YouTubers - one based in Kurla and one in Karachi, Pakistan, she was virtually reunited with her family in Kurla. Bano, in her mid 50s, and her family are now urging the Indian embassy in Pakistan to repatriate her as she does not have any money or even a passport.

The YouTubers

Khalfan Shaikh, a Kurla resident who runs the channel Hashtag Mumbai on YouTube, said he came across a video of a woman on Sunday afternoon. "The woman was saying that she lived in Kurla's Qureshi Nagar and was trafficked to Pakistan 20 years ago. So, I shared the video with my subscribers asking if anybody knew her. Within 30 minutes, I came to know she has a family here and I was talking to her grandson Bilal," Shaikh told mid-day.

Hamida Bano

Shaikh then got in touch with the Pakistani YouTuber, Waliullah Maroof who had shared Bano's video.

Maroof, a 27-year-old from Manghopir in Karachi, has helped around 40 people who were trafficked to Pakistan get back to their own countries. He said it was his mother who led him to first help a Bangladeshi man return to his homeland. Talking to mid-day, he said, "Hamida Bano came to my house a week ago and told me her story. I made a 11-minute video of her and posted it on YouTube, urging the viewers to see if they could locate her family. Soon, I got in touch with Khalfan Shaikh who also runs a Youtube channel who said he had traced Bano's family."

Bano with Waliullah Maroof, a Pakistani YouTuber, who shared her video with an aim to get in touch with her family

The reunion

Bano's daughter Yasmeen who lives in Qureshi Nagar was busy preparing for her daughter's engagement when her son Amaan, who watched the video with his cousin Bilal, told her about the video of a woman who looked like her mother. "Amaan was not even born when ammi left for abroad, but he had seen pictures of her and heard stories about her. When he showed me the video, I was shocked to see that it was indeed my ammi," said Yasmeen. That night at 9.30 pm a video call was arranged where Yasmeen was reunited with her mother.

Bano's younger sister Saeeda, who was also on the video call, said, "I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw my sister on the other side. All of us burst out crying."

How she was trafficked

Bano who lived in Qureshi Nagar with her parents was married to Mohammed Hanif Shaikh and had two sons and two daughters. As Shaikh was a drunkard, Bano had to work as a maid to feed her children.

In 1990, someone told her that she would earn good money if she went to the Gulf. She then worked in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for 9 years.

Bano told mid-day, "I met a woman in Vikhroli in 2002 who offered me another job in Dubai. At that time I was thinking of getting my youngest son married and also wanted to buy a decent house, so I accepted her offer. She took my passport and sent me to Dubai first. However, soon after landing in Dubai, I was put on a flight to Pakistan and brought to Sindh province."

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Her struggles in Pakistan

Bano said she was confined in a hut along with a Tamil woman. When the two realised they were trafficked, they ran away and walked to Karachi.

"We lived on footpaths and would buy some stuff with the little money I had hidden and sell them to get some food. It was then that I met a hawker whose wife had passed away, leaving behind 4 sons," she said.

Bano married the man in 2010, but he died a few years later. "His eldest son is now taking care of me. But I keep thinking about my home back in Kurla. There has not been a day I have not cried," Bano said, adding, "I got to speak to my daughter and sister yesterday. I don't want to live here anymore. As I do not have any documents or passport, I urge the Indian embassy to help me return to my family."

‘We searched for her for 4 years'

Yasmeen told mid-day, "When mother went abroad, we thought she would return in a year or two, as she always did. But when she did not, we met with the agent in Vikhroli but she told us ammi was working there. Later she started claiming, to our shock, that ammi did not want to return anymore. While we did not believe her and all our attempts to look for her failed, we had given up hope."

Bano's brother-in-law, Mubarak Ali, who worked in the Gulf from 2004 to 2008, said, "I looked for her in Dubai. I also went to Abu Dhabi and Bahrain, but could not find her. We presumed that something bad had happened to her and stopped looking when I returned in 2008." He added, "Now that we have found her, we want her to come back to us soon."

2002
Year when Bano was trafficked