The fantastically wonderful, yet patently absurd, movie Taken is built on a single, implausible premise: That a retired CIA agent could travel to France to track down his daughter, who had been kidnapped by Albanians and sold in to sex slavery.
Along with way, the CIA agent kills euurrything, then rescues his daughter with nary a scratch on her or him.
Pretty unbelievable, right? The real-life story is typically something much sadder. Dad is not an ex-CIA agent, daughter is never heard from again.
Except for this shit that just went down in Nepal.
From the Hindustan Times:
An Uttar Pradesh man trekked 500km to Nepal to free his three children from human traffickers, disguising himself as a beggar, working at a dhaba, cleaning vehicles and toiling at a brick kiln on the way to outwit the gang.
That’s some work right there.
Jagram, a shop owner in Bahraich district’s Turaini Rajab Kudiya village, finally found his sons being held as bonded labourers with 100 other children at a brick-making unit near Kathmandu in August. Jagram said the children were working under the most inhuman conditions, slaving from 3am to 5pm every day without rest and with just two meals.
And he found them without a single CIA gadget at his disposal.
Jagram’s journey to find his sons wasn’t easy. He mortgaged his farmland and set off for Nepal in July on a tip from an NGO.
Twenty days later, Jagram found his boys at the brick kiln, transporting soil and fetching water from a nearby lake. The whole area was well fortified and escape seemed hopeless.
Except when you are Jagram, which is Hindu for Liam Neeson.
But Jagram was determined. To get closer to his sons, he took up work as a labourer at the factory where he found four more children from his village. He asked them not to reveal his identity and to wait for the right moment to escape.
One night when security eased, Jagram took off with the seven children, but they barely made it to the neighbouring highway when security guards raised an alarm.
Jagram was unable to successfully escape. But once caught, did he give up hope, or outwit his captors after being savagely beaten?
Guess.
The group hid under piles of sand in a paddy field and took a bus next morning to Nepalganj – that shares a border with Bahraich – unaware that they were stepping into a trap.
The traffickers caught them at the Nepalganj bus station, took them to a secluded place and thrashed the victims mercilessly.
Jagram pleaded, saying he would return to his village and they could take the children. On being freed, he approached local police who raided the factory and took the owner and an aide into custody.
Bam. Just like Neesons. But boy are those some dumb captors. Okay, Liam Neeson, you can go, but you can’t come back. Like that ever works.