By Anwesha Banerjee
Kolkata, West Bengal: For over four years, a Kolkata cab driver has waited for a phone call from his daughter, Rekha (name changed). Bihar Police claim that the teenager was murdered but her father refuses to accept it. "I rushed to Bihar soon after I received the call of my daughter's death, but they could not show me the body," he said. "The name and mentioned age too were different from my daughter's. The only thing that matched was the first name of the deceased."
A resident of a Kolkata suburb under Sonarpur PS, South 24 Parganas, Rekha eloped and married a local youth, Samudra (name changed), in 2021. Aadhaar records indicate both were underage at the time. Rekha's father allowed the newlyweds to stay with his family. "But one fine morning in April 2022, I found out they had left for Bihar for some Orchestra dance programme," he said. "Many others from the same locality too had gone there along with Mamoni Sen. As all of them were together, I did not file any missing diary."
Allegations of a trafficking network
Rekha's family alleges that Sen is a habitual trafficker who used Samudra to lure Rekha to East Champaran, Bihar, and suspects Samudra and his mother are complicit. Samudra's mother denies the charge, saying her son left home during the pandemic after being scolded for his studies. "Me and my husband did not keep any contact with our son... He is dead to us," she said, adding she has no knowledge of his whereabouts.
When Sen briefly returned to the locality to vote, Rekha's parents confronted her. Sen blamed Samudra and his mother — a claim later found to be false — and has since disappeared from the area.
In May 2022, Bihar Police informed the father that his daughter, who was traveling with Sen's orchestra team, had committed suicide. When he arrived in Bihar, officials instead showed him an FIR lodged by Sen alleging murder. "The name in the FIR was Rekha Sardar, whereas my daughter's name is Rekha Mondal," the father notes.
On June 14, 2022, he petitioned the Sonarpur Police, the SP of Baruipur Police District, the DGP of West Bengal, and the DIG of CID, requesting the recovery of his daughter, dead or alive. With no response, he filed a Habeas Corpus petition (WPA 41 of 2022) under Article 226 in the Calcutta High Court. A Division Bench led by Justice Tapabrata Chakraborty dismissed the appeal after the Baruipur Police District submitted an affidavit confirming that Bihar Police had verified the girl's death and handed over the official documents. Despite the dismissal and the missing physical evidence, the father continues to search for leads through private contacts and is preparing to file a fresh appeal.
Rekha's case remains unresolved — her father disputes the identity and cause of death that Bihar Police have recorded, and no body has ever been shown to him. But whatever the truth of her individual fate, her journey out of a Kolkata suburb and into Bihar's orchestra circuit follows a route that has become disturbingly familiar to anti-trafficking workers across the state. Her disappearance sits inside a much larger, better-documented pattern — one where hundreds of girls from the same handful of Bengal districts vanish into the same trade every wedding season.
What are these Orchestra Groups?
"Bihar Orchestra" refers to commercial musical and dance troupes performing at weddings and festivals across rural and semi-urban Bihar. Over the last two decades, these groups have shifted from traditional folk music to commercialised stage shows where young women and teenage girls dance to suggestive Bollywood and Bhojpuri songs for large, often intoxicated male audiences — an entertainment facade over a trafficking network bridging rural poverty with lucrative demand.
The influx of young women and minors from West Bengal districts — Nadia, North and South 24 Parganas, Burdwan, Murshidabad, Purba Medinipur, and Hooghly — is driven by systemic poverty, domestic violence, and a lack of local livelihoods. Traffickers lure vulnerable girls with false promises of hospitality jobs, event management roles, or film industry breakthroughs. Once they arrive, the reality changes completely.
"The girls initially are being offered Rs 1,000-Rs2,000/day depending upon their dance skills," says Arijit Adhikary, West Bengal State Co-ordinator for the Association for Voluntary Action (AVA). "After one or two visits to Bihar/UP, the level of their exploitation increases when they are asked to dress up with maximum exposure. By this time, the organisers start applying tactics of force and deception to make them allow viewers to make body contact, kissing, and even sexual encounters to earn maximum money. Many organisers also push these girls into the sex trade during wedding seasons."
Virender Singh, Director of Mission Mukti Foundation, has rescued hundreds of these girls, the majority from Bengal. "While the cash flow generated during Bihar's intense wedding seasons is massive, very little of it reaches the performers," he says. "The girls are caught in a classic debt-trafficking trap where advance payments made to families or middlemen are weaponised by orchestra operators to enforce confinement, ensure compliance, and justify zero payout under the guise of 'cost recovery' for food and lodging."
In some instances, minor girls are lured into romantic relationships by agents and married off in Bihar; police records show these married girls are then pressured to recruit other vulnerable girls from their native villages. "In this way the girls are not only exposed to multiple sexual abuse and exploitation but are also sometimes becoming a part of this illegal trade with little knowledge of the legal consequences," Adhikary explains.
Anti-trafficking drives by the Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) of RPF and GRP have rescued as many as 25 girls recently from trains, stations and platforms, according to AVA. Last month alone, 70 minor girls were rescued along with Bihar police from various orchestra groups.
An officer with the nodal AHTU of Bengal said, "We are dealing with a deeply entrenched, organised inter-state syndicate. Girls are systematically moved across state borders. Once they reach the border districts or transit hubs in Bihar — Raxaul, Gopalganj, or Siwan — their phones are confiscated, and their movements are completely restricted. They are kept in confinement and brought out only under armed or heavy surveillance to perform on stage. What looks like a performance from the outside is, in reality, a case of forced labour and confinement under criminal duress.
Survivors' experiences
A 16-year-old from Kolkata and a 15-year-old from Howrah were recently stopped from traveling to Bihar for a dance performance by the RPF and an NGO. Asked if it was their first trip, both said no — they had been before but disliked the environment.
The 16-year-old described the abuse she faced: "We have to wear very small and revealing dresses. The dance performance generally starts at around 11 pm and continues till 5 am. We have to perform non-stop! Drunk men with guns and liquor bottles poured drinks all over me. When I protested, one of them took out a gun and pointed at me. If I don't drink and let them touch and kiss me, he would shoot me. I had to carry out their orders."
The Howrah teenager added, "Those drunkards tried to pull off our lehengas and forced us to come down from the stage. I refused. So two of them threatened to rape and murder me and dispose of my body in the dense forest, so that none could find me."
Both said they were promised handsome money by the orchestra owner, Suraj, but were never paid. Survivors allege orchestra owners rarely side with the girls when they are abused — instead siding with the contracting parties and pressuring the girls to comply. Several said the owners are in league with the men who make lewd advances, force physical contact, and sometimes make the girls sit on their laps.
A 13-year-old from Hooghly shared her story. "My father lost his work during the recent floods, and we were skipping meals. A girl I knew from school introduced me to an agent. He told me I could earn ₹15,000 a month just by dancing at weddings in Bihar. He said I would live in a nice hotel and could send money home to fix our roof. I believed him." Her dream shattered on arrival in Gopalganj. Her phone was taken for "safekeeping," and she was locked in a windowless, damp concrete room with seven other girls. "If we stopped dancing or showed exhaustion, the organiser beat us with belts behind the stage," she said. Another girl rescued with her added, "The organiser forced us into rooms with local men, saying we had to pay off the 'debt' of our train tickets and food. I didn't see a single rupee of the money I was promised."
A 14-year-old from Murshidabad said over the phone, "I ran away for my love of dance and acting. A man I met on social media promised me a role in Bhojpuri films. I stole some money from home and took a train to Bihar to meet him. He sold me directly to an orchestra manager in Saran for ₹40,000." Her routine was brutal: sleeping by day in cramped rooms locked from outside, woken at midnight to perform at village festivals or private parties. "When I cried and refused to perform to vulgar songs, the manager locked me in a dark closet without food for two days, telling me I would die there if I didn't comply and nobody would know." She was rescued along with 11 other girls a few months ago; the orchestra owner was arrested.
A 17-year-old from North 24 Parganas was taken to Muzaffarpur by her uncle. "The day we arrived at a compound outside Muzaffarpur, my uncle handed me over to a man named Sultan and vanished forever. When I refused to dance in skimpy dresses and heavy makeup, Sultan slapped me so hard my lip split. Later, he beat me with a plastic pipe. He told me my uncle had sold me to pay off his own gambling debts." She recalled, "We were treated worse than cattle — fed once a day with stale rotis and locked in a room where the windows were boarded up with wood."
A 15-year-old from Kakdwip (Sundarbans) recalled, "After the cyclone destroyed our mud house, our family moved to a temporary camp. A woman who visited offering relief supplies befriended me. She told me she could get me a job in a boutique in Kolkata. She took me to a railway station, drugged my tea, and when I woke up, I found myself in Siwan, Bihar." The orchestra operator destroyed her Aadhaar card, gave her a new local name, and tutored her to say she was 20 and a local resident. "My feet were constantly blistered and bleeding from dancing in cheap heels on rough roads in the name of the baarat. If we showed any signs of slowing down, they threatened to send goons to our villages in Bengal to harm our families," she added.
This article was originally published in 101 Reporters under Creative Common license. Read the original article.
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