According to the United Nations Office for Drugs and Crime (UNODC), South Asia is the fastest-growing and second-largest region for human trafficking in the world after East Asia. Most human trafficking victims come from poor rural areas, lured with promises of good jobs, only to find themselves forced to work in fields or brick kilns, confined in homes as domestic workers or as commercial sex workers.

 Until recently, Nepal was the preferred transit point for traffickers to send women to the Gulf but the rescue of 179 Nepalis, 147 women and 32 men, from the north-eastern state of Manipur by the state police in February reveals Moreh, a bustling commercial Indian border town in Manipur, bordering Myanmar, as the emerging border point for human trafficking.