KARACHI, April 13: A Central Asian woman has sought shelter in Edhi Home after giving up prostitution and has asked the Edhi Foundation to help her in returning to Azerbaijan, her home country.

The girl, who identified herself as V. Swaleha, 24, came to the Edhi Home in Sohrab Goth on Sunday evening. Earlier, she, with a Pakistani man, Shakir, contacted a local Urdu daily to seek help, where she was advised to go to Edhi Home. Shakir took her to Edhi Home and left leaving her there.

Swaleha told Edhi Foundation officials that her acquaintances called her from Azerbaijan to join them in their garment business. She said she came to Pakistan in mid-February to seek a respectable employment but her passport was taken from her and she was forced into prostitution. She lived in a hotel near Cantonment railway station.

She told Edhi officials that Shakir visited her frequently and proposed her. When she insisted that he married her, he became reluctant and left her at the Edhi Home. She told the Edhi Foundation that the hotel management was not returning her passport to her. She sought the Edhi Foundation’s help to get her passport back. She also requested them to give 2,000 US dollars to her as she wanted to return home.

Edhi sources said they had collected her passport through the Frere police and would contact the embassy concerned for her return to her home country.

SHO Frere police station Qamaruz Zaman told Dawn that Shakir had proposed Swaleha but later he became reluctant. The Edhi Foundation asked the police to get her passport from the hotel where she was staying and the police collected the passport and handed it over to the Edhi Foundation.

The police have not registered a case in this connection. Also, they were reluctant to disclose the number of Central Asian women and girls staying in city hotels and what were their activities.