The women stood out in the crowd on a September evening.

Raj Kumar Gurung and Rajesh Singh spotted the three – one clad in a saree and two others in worn-out jeans and T-shirts – looking “totally lost” next to the pay-and-use toilet in front of Bagdogra International Airport.

Gurung and Singh knew right away they were potential victims of trafficking.

The two men are members of the transit monitoring team set up by the non-profit Kanchenjunga Uddhar Kendra in Siliguri. Their goal: to prevent the crossborder trafficking of Nepalese girls and women through Bagdogra airport. The team of volunteers catches potential victims, counsels them, and tries to take them back to Nepal. The monitoring unit was set up in May at the airport that is barely 20 km from the India-Nepal border. Since then, it has sent close to 100 Nepalese women home.

The three women were sent back too.

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