THE SECRET ‘CINDERELLA’ SLAVES OF NEPAL

Extraordinary stories of children who were saved by the earthquake

On the day of the earthquake, Sumitra was busy getting ready for a party when her room began to shake. Realising something was wrong, she ran for the stairs, but she was too late. Blinded by the dust, she wasn’t able to escape before the house came crashing down around her, trapping her under the rubble.

But no one came to rescue 11-year-old Sumitra: her ‘family’ were busy saving other people, and she was the least of their priorities.

Sumitra was only a maid, a Nepalese Cinderella who had toiled in their home since she was just eight years old.

She was one of thousands of children who became trapped under the rubble that day, one of more than a million who were affected by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake which struck at the heart of the country six months ago.

And now she is one of 27 vulnerable children being cared for in a Unicef-supported camp near the small town of Melamchi, in the badly affected Sindhurpalchowk district, north-west of Kathmandu. Each of them has their own heartbreaking tale of how they ended up there after the earthquake which killed some 8,617 people.

Monica - not her real name - came from a desperately poor village in the north of the country.

So when an ‘agent’ came to the village, offering work in a carpet factory in the Nepalese capital, she thought nothing of following him south.

Just 13, she told no one of her plans: had she, things may have been different for Monica.

The factory, it turned out, was little more than slave labour: from 6am the girls toiled at the looms, their fingers bruising as they rushed to finish their intricate piece of carpet. Too slow, and they were beaten.

Should a girl fall asleep at the loom, green chillies were rubbed in her eyes. Monica avoided this fate, but beatings were daily, even twice daily.

Monica managed to return home once, but was followed: you must return, the agent told her, you owe me 60,000 rupees. ‘I wished I could run away,’ she said. But then the earthquake came, and the walls cracked.

The girls escaped the factory, where they had been sleeping in a tent for four with 20 girls since the quake, and went with the agent.

‘We are the same caste, we have the same surname, I am like your brother,’he promised.

But he wasn’t like their brother, and he wasn’t taking them to the countryside: he was heading for the border.

Trafficking has been a problem in Nepal for many years.

Women and girls - some as young as seven - forced into India’s brothels, found dancing in bars in Tanzania, working in the homes of the super-rich in the Gulf.

At its worst, those promised jobs and a new life are simply used for their organs.