Sunita Tamang was offered a trip to India by her cousin on a condition she didn’t tell her family members. The 21-year-old could not resist her desire to travel. There was nothing to disbelieve her, for she was her cousin.

   Tamang’s cousin sold her to a brothel in India.

“I never doubted their intention and joined them freely. We had gone in a private van from here and was not bothered anywhere along the check posts either,” recalls Sunita, who used to reside in Kapan with her mother-in-law. Her husband works in Malaysia.

Sunita further adds that her cousin and her cousin’s husband started acting strange while they were in Delhi for two weeks. She then requested to return home but instead they told her they would head towards Kolkata to meet the brother-in-law’s parents.

But once she reached Kolkata she was kept in a strange house with other Nepali girls, and the couple left the place without her. They have remained at large since.

Forms of human trafficking have changed over the years, but women being trafficked by people close to them have remained intact, experts say.

People who rescued her say they fear that Sunita’s little girl was the main target. Her three-year-old daughter with some hormone treatment would be ready to go into business in the next three to five years.

“We have rescued quite a few minors who were given hormone injections to grow up quicker. Trafficking for organs has also become rampant. A lot has changed but the trend of women being trafficked by people close to them has remained,” said Anuradha Koirala, founder of Maiti Nepal.

The final destination of girls being sold has also changed. It is not just India where women are being ferried to. They have reached the Gulf and African countries.

China has also emerged as another alternative. In the last year alone, Maiti Nepal had intervened 178 women from being trafficked to China through the Tatopani border.

Maiti Nepal has registered 44 cases against trafficking in 2015 alone and in many of these cases the women were trafficked by their near ones.

“In ninety percent of the cases it is either a close relative or a good friend who lure these women with the prospect of a good income,” said Uma Magar, legal advisor of Maiti Nepal.

As per Magar, the changes in pattern of trafficking have made it difficult for them to tackle the phenomenon and the fact that near ones are involved makes it even harder for them to get hold of the perpetrator.

“Despite being sold by them, victims try to protect their relatives and do not give us all the details about the people involved,” Magar said.