We were evicted and then our home was burnt, we want peace

Khawspur, Araria: I was born into the Nutt community. I was born in a place called Jogabani. My father was a butcher and thus he used to sustain his family. In the year 1988, we lost our homestead as some people said that the land didn’t belong to us and they evicted us from Jogabani. Our home was very close to the Nepal border. We became homeless.

The relatives who used to stay at Khawaspur came to my father and consoled him and told him why lament over this? They said come to Khawaspur and all of us will stay together. We were quite young at that time. We shifted to Khawaspur, built a new house and started living there.

My father was out of job and soon both of my parents started working as agricultural labourers. They used to earn hardly around forty or fifty rupees. It was a family of eight children, my parents and grandparents, altogether a family of twelve. It was very difficult to sustain.

Then during the riots of 1992 our house in Khawaspur was also burnt. We were shattered. We had nothing to eat. We didn’t get any relief from the government. After that, my sisters and my family got into this mess (prostitution). We saw all our sisters getting into this mess one by one in front of our own eyes. Then the village heads told us that if we do not stop prostitution in the Muhalla by nine, they would fine us Rs. 10,000. We agreed. After a couple of days, some people came and knocked at the door. We told them that the village heads have asked us to close the door by nine.

After that, once when my father was going for namaaz, they just abducted him. We cried and yelled but no one came to our rescue. In the morning some people told us to register a case against eh abductors and others forbade us to do so and said that we can’t prove anything against them. Then we sent someone to the kidnappers and were informed that we had to pay a ransom to get my father freed. We had no option but to pay and get him freed.

We want to be free of this. We want peace.