Women Continue to be Trafficked, but Government Remains Inert

Trafficking of women in India is a vicious circle of middlemen who dupe girls, as well as cops who turn a blind eye.

Vicious Trafficking Circle

• Floods in West Bengal in 2013 led to a spike in the number of cases of trafficking in women
• Girls in West Bengal being lured away by men known to them on the pretext of marriage or a better life
• Activists allege police callousness in registering FIRs on missing girls adds to the problem

When West Bengal’s 24 Parganas, on the Bangladesh border, was devastated by floods in April 2013, the waters not only submerged large parts of the district, they also destroyed the homes and livelihoods of lakhs of people, forcing a mass exodus to other parts of the state. The troubles of the people, especially women, did not end there.

Over the last two years, a large number of women have been trafficked by organised gangs as domestic helps or, worse, sex workers.

The scale of the displacement and its effect on the populace came to light when an NGO, Shakti Vahini, rescued a number of women hailing from the district in various parts of New Delhi and surrounding areas.

“There has been a pattern in human trafficking. Most of the girls are being brought to Delhi from Jharkhand and West Bengal. But the difference lies in how they are being wooed. In Jharkhand, the traffickers are targeting the poorest of villages. They entice impoverished families by dangling the carrot of employment as domestic helps in Delhi, with salaries ranging between Rs 3,000 and Rs 4,000 per month”

—Shakti Vahini head Rishi Kant

Bengal’s Missing Girls

But in the case of West Bengal, it was found that the girls were lured away by boys – who would ‘befriend’ them – on the pretext of either marriage or a better life in the cities. “The gangs keep an eye out for school-going girls in their early teens. They first befriend them by offering small gifts and then on the pretext of showing them the glitzy outside world, take them away,” Kant said.

According to Kant, there is a common thread which runs through the narrative of almost all the girls brought from West Bengal. “They all said they had been offered soft drinks – obviously laced with some drugs – on consuming which they lost consciousness. On coming to their senses they found themselves in Delhi,” he revealed.

Noting that the Supreme Court had expressed concern that about a 100,000 minors go missing in the country every year and had demanded that Section 370 of the IPC – pertaining to buying or disposing of any person as a slave – be applied when a complaint is filed, Kant said often the police are reluctant to lodge FIRs as it inflates the crime graph. When cases are filed, they are not pursued to their logical conclusion.

Lack of Coordination

This said, there is hardly any coordinated effort in India to prevent human trafficking. No wonder, the recently-released 2015 Trafficking in Persons Report by the US Department of State has placed India in the list of Tier II countries. Tier I is the highest ranking given to countries that fully comply with its Trafficking Victims Protection Act’s (TVPA) minimum standards and Tier III is the lowest level of performance in acknowledging the existence of human trafficking and making efforts to address the problem.

The report points out that “India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex trafficking.” It noted that “forced labor constitutes India’s largest trafficking problem; men, women, and children in debt bondage – sometimes inherited from previous generations – are forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories. Ninety percent of India’s trafficking problem is internal, and those from the most disadvantaged social strata – lowest caste Dalits, members of tribal communities, religious minorities, and women and girls from excluded groups – are most vulnerable.”

Noting that thousands of unregulated work placement agencies reportedly lure adults and children for sex trafficking or forced labour, including domestic servitude, under false promises of employment, the report also pointed to how begging ring leaders sometimes maim children to earn more money.

Failure of States

The report has recommended that India “urge state governments to comply with the October 2012 Supreme Court judgment on bonded labour and provide anti-trafficking training or guidance for diplomatic personnel to prevent their engagement or facilitation of trafficking crimes”.

The State Department report mentioned that the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) had in May 2014 held a video conference between the joint secretary and the principal anti-trafficking officers in each state to discuss best practices in operating Anti Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs).

The MHA’s only contribution has been to dash off advisories to the states, reminding them of the importance of updating statistics. These attempts have failed. India has clearly not stood up to the scale of the problem.

(The writer is a freelance journalist)