(Newswire.net — March 11, 2017) — According to the Indian news website “Youth Ki Awaaz” (Voice of the Youth), poverty-stricken Nepalese women were selling 20 square inches of skin tissue for $150 to be used in the global cosmetic surgery market, or more precisely for penis and breast enlargements.
The skin tissue was removed from their backs, leaving the victims with a large scar.
The website reported the Nepalese women were duped and trafficked to brothels in Indian cities such as Mumbai, and then later duped again into selling their skin.
They were drugged and were not aware of their skin being removed, victims have said in the report.
Allegedly, the skin of Nepalese women is being sold to Indian pathology laboratories where it is processed and after exported to certain companies in the United States which make skin and tissue derivative products. These products are ultimately used in the global cosmetic surgery market.
Trafficker Prem Basgai, in district jail of Kabrepalanchowk, told YKA that skin is in huge demand. He explained that agents take women until the Indo-Nepal border, then another agent takes them to India and hands them over to yet another agent. The third agent arranges the extraction of the skin. The women have to sign that they have donated the skin voluntarily, as to leave no trails of the skin tissue being sold afterwards.
Women’s rights activists called on the government to urgently investigate the report.
Sunita Danuwar of Shakti Samuha, a charity which helps to rehabilitate victims of trafficking, said that the government should get serious about this matter and protect the women in question.
Nepali government said it was stunned by the report and vowed to investigate further.
Nepal’s Women, Child and Social Welfare Minister Kumar Khadka told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the government was shocked to hear the news, and that they vowed to investigate whether it is true or not.
Some media already reported the trafficking of impoverished Nepalese women for sexual exploitation and even kidney transplantation, but nobody reported human skin trafficking, until now.