Indian company under investigation for alleged sexual abuse and exploitation of employees

A scandal involving a company that allegedly promised jobs to young women to lure them into captivity and sexual abuse has caused widespread outrage in the eastern Indian state of Bihar.

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