A young woman from Punjab’s Moga district, who recently returned from Iraq after intervention by Rajya Sabha member Bab Balbir Singh Seechewal, said a travel agent from Jagraon lured poor girls from rural areas with false promises.Sharing her experience, she said 20-25 Punjabi girls were still trapped in Iraq after being taken there on pretext of well-paying jobs. The 29-year-old woman called on Seechewal at Sultanpur Lodhi to thank him for his effort to rescue her. She said she left for Iraq on Jan 8, 2024. The ‘agent’ promised her a tailoring job, weekly holidays, and permission to use a phone to contact her family but the reality was completely opposite, she said.Once in Iraq, she was forced to work as a domestic servant, she said. The employer tried to assault her, and when she resisted and recorded a video as evidence, she was brutally beaten at the behest of the agent and his wife, she said. “One day, they beat me until the stick broke.”The continuous abuse and violence took a toll on her. In desperation, she reached out to Baba Seechewal through social media on Aug 10. Seechewal took up the issue with ministry of external affairs, and she returned to Punjab on Sept 28. Even a month later, she is haunted by her ordeal, she said.Seechewal appealed to govt to take action against such travel rackets operating under guise of foreign employment.
