In May this year, several reports surfaced of Indian women being lured by agents on the pretext of jobs like “domestic help” and “caretaker” with good salaries in the Middle East, taken on a so-called “extendable” tourist visa, then held captive with their passports and cellphones confiscated, and eventually sold to locals for anywhere from Rs 80,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh or more. Another similar case that caught global attention was when controversial social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate were arrested from their Bucharest home in Romania in December last year over grave charges of rape and trafficking of women. They were convicted last month. These are both incidents of human trafficking, something that has been a global and widespread concern for many decades and continues to be so.