A scandal in the eastern Indian state of Bihar involving a company that allegedly promised jobs to young women to lure them into captivity and sexual abuse has caused nationwide outrage.
Police are investigating the allegations and have made two arrests based on a criminal complaint initiated by Shivangi Devi*, a woman who claims to have escaped the company after suffering months of horrific abuse.
In 2022, Shivangi was a 20-year-old undergraduate student majoring in Hindi at a college near her village in Bihar. She said she was scrolling through Facebook one day in June when she received a friend request from a stranger with a private profile. Curious to know who it was, she accepted.
“He began speaking to me casually, like any other new acquaintance,” Shivangi told This Week in Asia in a phone interview. “Then he asked me if I was interested in working at the pharmaceutical sales company where he was employed.
“He said it’d be a good opportunity for a student like me. I’d just have to work for around five hours per day in the office and could spend the rest of the time using the company’s internet and computer facilities for my academic work. The pay was 25,000 Indian rupees [US$300].”
Shivangi’s father worked as a security guard in a city in northern India with a monthly income of 20,000 rupees and was the sole provider for their family of eight.
“It was my father’s dream to see me, his oldest child, get a good job and become independent. I was thrilled to finally get the chance to contribute to the family income,” she said.
When she arrived at the office building of the company, called DBR Unique, in the Bihar city of Muzaffarpur, she was told she had to make a deposit of 20,000 rupees to fund her own training. The 500 or so other employees working there were also required to pay for their training, according to Shivangi.
“I was taught to sing praises of the company and attract new employees for them by using the phone and social media. They told me I’d only start getting paid if I recruited around 20 other people,” she told This Week in Asia.
Multiple attempts were made to contact DBR Unique and its employees to comment on the case and accusations against them, but they did not respond by press time.
The company’s website says its aim is to provide a “solution to unemployment” by recruiting employees as salespeople to promote traditional Indian Ayurvedic medicines and create “positive social change”.
Shivangi said not long after she started living in the building housing DBR’s office – which she said was part of the requirements of the job – one of the company’s employees began regularly sexually assaulting her.
She also claimed she and other young women employed at the office were held captive in the building while getting abused sexually.
“The company officials would threaten us, saying that they had connections with powerful politicians. We were never allowed to use our phones without being supervised, so there was no way we could ask for help,” Shivangi said.
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She said that when she told the company’s founder about the abuse, “he simply told me that he would arrange a marriage between my rapist and me”, adding that no one would believe she had been raped and that it would ruin my family’s reputation.
Shivangi said she was eventually able to escape the building where she was held captive in October and went to report what had happened to her at the Ahiyapur police station in Muzaffarpur, but police initially refused to register a report based on her complaint.
In February, she appealed to a Muzaffarpur-based court to investigate her claims, after which police were directed by the court to register a case.
Based on her statements, a police report was registered at Ahiyapur police station implicating nine individuals.
On June 17, a video allegedly showing a DBR official brutally beating up a woman employed by the company went viral on social media.
That same day, Muzaffarpur Deputy Superintendent of Police Vinita Sinha said a special investigation team had been formed to arrest the nine accused.
“The victims were beaten up by the accused and sexually abused as well. The complainant and other victims were also coerced into marriages,” Sinha told local media, as quoted by India TV News.
“Later, they were deceived into aborting their fetus. The complainant also told the police that whenever they asked for their salaries, the accused used to tell them that they were part of the firm now,” she added.
On June 18, the Muzaffarpur police issued a press release saying that two employees of DBR Unique, including the one Shivangi accused of sexually assaulting her, had been arrested in Uttar Pradesh.
The release said their investigation had found cases of assaults against both men and women employed at the company and that all the allegations made by the complainant, including accusations of sexual exploitation, were being investigated closely.
On June 20, Awadesh Dixit, Muzaffarpur’s police superintendent, told the media that the man in the viral video had been identified and arrested in relation to the case.
However, a sub-inspector at the Ahiyapur police station told This Week in Asia on July 9 that there had been no further developments in the case since those arrests and claimed there was no evidence that the company had been engaged in fraud or wide-scale abuse.
“Further investigation will be carried out once we receive orders from the higher-ups. As of now, we have no evidence that DBR Unique is a fraudulent company,” said the sub-inspector, who requested anonymity.
The sub-inspector went on to say police believed that Shivangi had an arranged marriage with her alleged rapist, and they considered the issue “nothing more than a lovers’ argument”.
Meena Tiwari, secretary general at All India Progressive Women’s Association, a national organisation that spoke to several former employees of DBR Unique, accused police of not investigating the case seriously.
“The survivors are receiving death threats targeting them and their family members regularly. None of the women and men ‘employed’ there ever received a salary. The company has been known to the police since a male victim escaped last year and filed a court case against the company,” Tiwari told This Week in Asia.
“DBR Unique has offices in several other cities in India, such as Raxaul and Gorakhpur; all of them are still operating, and we believe there are thousands of victims still being held captive and sexually abused.”
In 2018, AIPWA had also advocated for the victims of a state-funded girls’ shelter in Muzaffarpur, where dozens of vulnerable children were sexually abused by authorities for years.
Last month, Bhai Virendra, a political leader belonging to the opposition party in Bihar, told local media that such crimes would keep happening because of local politicians who “supply girls to those in power”.
“After committing such crimes against women, these people go on to become powerful ministers and members of the parliament themselves,” he said in a statement.
On June 19, Legislative Assembly member Sandeep Saurav and Legislative Council member Shashi Yadav travelled to Muzaffarpur to deliver a statement and submit their findings regarding the case.
“Prima facie, the matter could not have continued for such a long time without government and administrative patronage. Only a high-level inquiry can unearth everything. Immediate action should be taken against the accused and the victims should be provided protection,” they said in their statement to the media.
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Indian social activist Shabnam Hashmi told This Week in Asia the scale of organised crimes against women was increasing all over India.
“Most of such cases come to light and then are forgotten, as the whole machinery is highly patriarchal and the justice system very slow. There is a need to form a special investigation team headed by a retired judge with at least two women activists in it, apart from others,” she said.
Shivangi said police were still not investigating her case as one of organised sexual assault and scamming. A few weeks ago, she said she was offered a sum of 5 million rupees by DBR Unique in return for revoking the case against them.
Her voice breaking over the phone as she held back tears, Shivangi said: “Five million means nothing to me when it is offered through unfair means. All I want is justice – and I want no other girl to go through what I did.”
*Name changed to protect the witness’ identity
