“Thirteen-year-old Geeta ran away from home In the hope of uniting with her beloved, she instead was sold and resold in Delhi and Mumbai brothels and forced into selling her flesh every night”
Geeta was one of the few who was rescued by Prajwal foundation, there are many such organizations and people who are working towards this cause round the clock and are saving those precious lives which deserve to be in school and colleges rather than in brothels and brick making factories.
Still after all the efforts, on an average 600,000-800,000 men, women and children are trafficked across international borders each year. Approximately 80 percent are women and girls and 50% are minors.
A close vigil at the Indian scenario, and you will be shocked with the rising trafficking cases. Women and children in India are trafficked for sex tourism, pornography and brothel-based prostitution. Majority of them are lured with lucrative job offers and pushed into this endless misery, children are either kidnapped or abducted. A few fortunate ones get rescued, others remain trapped forever. Trafficking in India spreads across the entire country, every year there are thousands of cases coming to the limelight from the states of Tamil Nadu, Assam, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal, being the highest in human traffic crimes.
As per data from National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), in 2013, the maximum number of crimes (65.5%) committed in India were related to human trafficking and were registered under the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act 1956.The same year, 31.1% of the crimes were registered under Procuration of Minor Girls (Indian Penal Code Section 366-A). Further in 2011, pan-India, around 35,000 children reportedly went missing; out of whom, almost 11,000 were from West Bengal.
An anti-trafficking nodal cell has been put in place under the Ministry of Home Affairs to curb the menace. Besides, a web portal on anti-human trafficking too have been launched and the Ministry of Women and Child Development is implementing Ujjawala, a programme that focuses on rescue, rehabilitation and repatriation of victims. However, organisations working in solving human trafficking say these measures are not enough. Moreover, there is very little help from the local bodies.
Rescue foundation, Prajwala, Gudiya are some names of organizations that are trying their best to abolish human trafficking from the face of this earth, and they have given a major setback to the monsters who trade in humans. These organizations don’t just rescue them and leave them by themselves, they play an instrumental role in rehabilitating them, finding them jobs to sustain themselves and develop life skills to make them employable and rebuild their confidence.
Riddhi from Rescue Foundation that works in rehabilitation of victims of human trafficking says, ‘In 20 years we have rescued at least 7000 girls, majority from India, Nepal, Bangladesh.
She adds. “Sometimes there is mafia involved, risk of attack is always present, we have to see the availability of the police and then go for rescue after thorough investigation and receiving all the information.”
Rescue Foundation regularly receive complaints that a girl is missing from a family either in India, Bangladesh or Nepal. Based on the description and photographs of the missing girl, their experienced investigators locate the girl in brothels of Mumbai, Thane, Pune or Delhi.
Nidhi pointed out,”The entire proems is very risky if our investigator is identified as a rescue; he gets brutally beaten up or even killed.”
As Per United Nations Report, traffickers import women and girls from variety of countries. such as Ukraine. Georgia. Kazakhstan. Uzbekistan. Azerbaijan, Chechnya and Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Thailand, Malaysia and Bangladesh.
Prajal foundation informs, “Economic hardships coupled with the prevailing status of women in society, and changing public attitudes towards sex and morality creates the context for the flourishing of this modern-day slavery. A disturbing fact is that the age of the children is progressively declining to meet the male demand for younger prostitutes. There is a widely held belief that sex with children, especially virgins, will cure sexually transmitted diseases and prevent one from contracting HIV/AIDS. One of every four victims rescued from prostitution is a child, and 60% of these children are HIV positive.”
Interestingly, after the devastating earthquake in Nepal, human trafficking shot up by 15 per cent, a report of the National Human Rights Commission of Nepal. Women are approached in villages in remote districts and offered lucrative jobs, from here on they are taken on buses to Delhi and send to gulf countries as well. People are trafficked into India through the border districts of Chitwan, Rupandehi, Parsa, Jhap and Kailali. The main source district for trafficking is Sindhupalchok, while Kathmandu is a transit district for the trade. Organisations like Maiti Nepal, 3 angels Nepal, Shakti Samukha have done a great deal of work in preventing human trafficking.
In the last thirty years, over I million children and women were smuggled out of the country. Reports also suggest that a human trafficking gang bring people from Bangladesh to Europe alluring them of good job offers. Further families are blackmailed to send money for their release. In Bangladesh, as well, organizations like ATSEC, Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), Relief International (RI) has contributed tremendously in curbing human trafficking. but seem like there are long miles to go before this mortification ends.
Sex trafficking not only results in a severe violation of human rights but also causes adverse physical, psychological and moral consequences for the victims. Not only do they lose ambition and dreams but they also get infected with serious or life-threatening illnesses such as HIV/AIDS. It is high time. more awareness is created among the masses about its prevalence, and stringent deterrent actions are taken against the culprits.