Sixty-five-year-old Hamida Banu spoke to her daughter Yasmin for the first time in 20 years after she left India in 2002 when a recruitment agent promised to get her the job of a cook in Dubai. What followed were nightmarish two decades that saw Banu trafficked to Pakistan.
But unlike many cases of human trafficking, Banu’s has a silver lining — after a video of her plight went viral on social media. A Karachi-based social media user Waliullah Maroof uploaded a video of Banu where the latter is seen sharing her plight of getting cheated by a recruitment agent and landing up in Pakistan. And when Mumbai-based journalist Khalfan Shaikh shared the video with his followers, Banu could connect with her family in India.
Maroof and Shaikh helped set up the video call between Banu and her daughter Yasmin Shaikh, who lives in Mumbai’s Kurla, reported BBC. After Shaikh shared the video, it was first spotted by Banu’s grandson Aman (Yasmin’s son).
Banu, after talking to her daughter and her family, said she “Stayed away because of helplessness, not because of choice. I was so hopeless when I will meet my children and how I will live.”
In the emotional video call , Banu is seen asking Yasmin, “Mereko pehchana, beta (Did you recognise me)?”
“I recognise you,” said Yasmin. “Where were you all these years, asked a woman whom Banu recognised as Sayida.
“Don’t ask me where I was, and how I have been. I missed you all so much. I didn’t stay here willingly, I had no other choice,” Banu replied.
Sharing a picture of Hamida Banu talking to her family, Maroof wrote on Facebook, “This is the picture when ‘Amma’ was talking to her daughter on video call. They had to wait 16 years for this.”
Maroof told ThePrint that Banu could not recollect the exact year when she reached Pakistan. Her daughter later clarified that Banu had left India in 2002, Maroof said.
Commenting on the YouTube video, a user named Bilal Razvi identified Banu as his ‘Khala’ and thanked Maroof. He said talking to her was like an Eid celebration in their family.
“I was hopeless, I thought what if I died without meeting my family,” said Banu in an interview to News18. She said she had tried once talking to her daughter from Pakistan but was ridiculed, saying the contact number was wrong.
Banu had managed to reach Karachi’s Manghopir with little money that she had hidden in her salwar. She later married to a Pakistani man who died during the Covid-19 pandemic and has a stepson.
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The neighbour who helped
Talking to ThePrint, Maroof, who is a social activist and imam at a local mosque in Karachi, said that he first met Banu around 15 years ago when she moved to his neighbourhood and opened a small shop. Banu has been living in Karachi’s Manghopir after her initial three months in Pakistan’s Hyderabad.
Maroof claimed to have helped almost 40 such women, who have been trafficked to Pakistan, reconnect with their families. Hamida Banu had approached his mother to help her connect with her family in Mumbai’s Kurla, Maroof said.
After her husband died, Banu, who said she had earlier visited Doha and Saudi Arabia, decided to go to Dubai for work, but was misled. She alleged how she was conned of Rs 20,000 and given a Pakistani visa instead. Banu and one other woman were taken to Pakistan’s Hyderabad and made to live in a shanty for nearly three months where they even had to struggle for food.
In a BBC report, Yasmin said that in her mother’s previous stints abroad, she would call them regularly but after 2002, they lost contact. When they approached the agent who had organised the Banu’s trip, the children were told that their mother was well and didn’t want to speak with them.
“We kept returning to ask questions about our mother, and then she [the agent] suddenly vanished,” Yasmin added.
Maroof told ThePrint that the Indian Embassy has contacted them and asked for Banu’s documents. He said he has shared Banu’s ration card and a Qatari health card that he received from Yasmin over WhatsApp, along with Aadhaar cards of two of her children. The process of Banu reuniting with her family is ongoing, Maroof added.