Under crushing financial strain, Budathoki sold one of his kidneys to organ traffickers for $5,000, a sum he hoped would help set him up for a lifetime free of money problems. Instead, he got a lifetime of health problems - and only a fraction of the money promised to him by a shady broker in Hokshe, a village of tiny farms and mud huts that has been the center of the illegal organ trade in Nepal for more than a decade. (AP Photo/ Niranjan Shrestha) (The Associated Press)
HOKSHE, Nepal -- Under crushing financial strain, Kumar Budathoki sold one of his kidneys to organ traffickers for $5,000, a sum he hoped would help set him up for a lifetime free of money problems.
The capital of Nepal is no different from many places in the world where aging populations, poor diets and no health insurance systems mean increased organ disease.
By David Odongo
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The Nairobian has unearthed a scheme where poor teenage girls are trafficked from villages in India and Nepal to Nairobi on a tourist visa, but are then being subjected to sexual slavery by rich Asian businessmen.
Raji speaks softly, her small, cross-legged frame fitting neatly into a plastic garden chair. "When we felt weak and couldn't work, they would beat us with metal rods," she says.
There is a cluster of rusty steel reinforcement bars sticking out of the concrete above us; it becomes clear those are the kind of rods she is talking about.
The synergy blossomed at a two-day consultation workshop held in Goa on June 26. The workshop involved government representatives, police, NGOs and such service providers from eight states including Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Nagaland, Assam, Mizoram, Manipur and West Bengal.
Bajir Singh Tamang, 37 years old, was convicted of trafficking poor teenage girls from rural areas to India and the Middle East to work in the sex trade with promises of legitimate jobs.
