Human trafficking is a crime. To report in India, call Shakti Vahini
+91-11-42244224, +91-9582909025 or the national helpline Childline on 1098.
“As per a study on human trafficking, the state of Jharkhand has emerged as India’s trafficking hub with thousands of tribal women and girls being trafficked out of the state each year to Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and beyond [while] human traffickers are also involved in many cases of missing children.” – The Wire | Shakti Vahini | Tourism locations | Adivasi tribal bondage slavery trafficking (Safe search) >>
Trafficking in persons is considered as the second largest organised crime in India. There were 1714 registered cases of persons trafficked in India in 2020, according to the National Crime Record Bureau. Independent reports estimate that in India there are currently 8 million people trapped in trafficking. The National Crime Record Bureau (2020) also states that 778,379 persons are missing.
Source: “Trafficking & Migration”, INDIA UNHEARD – the Grassroots Newsroom
URL: https://www.videovolunteers.org/category/videos/trafficking-migration/
Date Visited: 9 February 2023
The demand for live-in maids in big cities is rising, and feeding on this vast market are numerous, obscure placement agencies that lure vulnerable girls from villages with false promise of a good job in the city. People near you may be paying these agencies to hire a maid without verification, and in most cases, paying the monthly salary to the agency instead of her. […]
Take a stand for all these girls and young women who can’t speak up for themselves and ensure that they are treated well and are working on their own free will.
Human trafficking is a crime. To report in India, call Shakti Vahini on +91-11-42244224, +91-9582909025 or the national helpline Childline on 1098.
Source: PLEDGE TO MAKE YOUR HOME SLAVERY FREE – FreedomUnited.org
Address: https://www.freedomunited.org/advocate/pledge-make-home-slavery-free/
Date Visited: 24 April 2022
Many people have heard the term Human Trafficking, but fewer understand what it really means. Watch this quick video lesson to learn more.
UPDATES & BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Civil society organisations worried about new proposal
Childline 1098 is a 24×7 emergency, free phone outreach for children in distress. It is one of the world’s biggest emergency helpline services dedicated to children, and is considered to be among the country’s largest emergency response systems with 50 lakh [5 million] calls received annually. […]
Moreover, Childline’s work not only involves rescuing children but also counselling them, identifying what is bothering them and then finding solutions to those problems. […]
Half the calls made to the helpline are also silent calls, when children are too scared or traumatised to speak up. Social workers slowly build confidence and only after many such silent calls do children open up which is why social workers say transferring 1098 to 112 may result in a drop in reporting of crimes and other cases by children. […]
Childline is a last-mile responder for children in need of care and protection and the entire child rights sector depends on it. […]
Source: “Childline 1098 may be merged with emergency helpline 112” by Jagriti Chandra, The Hindu, 17 April 2022
URL: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/cloud-over-child-helpline-1098-as-government-mulls-merging-it-with-national-emergency-helpline-112/article65327177.ece
Date Visited: 1 November 2022
Tribal children are particularly vulnerable and we need to have more concerted efforts to prevent trafficking from home States
Source: Trafficked tribal girl returns home with employer’s help | Shakti Vahini
Address: https://shaktivahini.org/trafficked-tribal-girl-returns-home-with-employers-help/
Date Visited: 21 June 2020
NDTV video: “Jharkhand Emerges Trafficking Hub” | watch the television report from Jharkhand here >>
Activists say the number of trafficked children is hugely under reported, and that the actual figures could be in lakhs [hundreds of thousands]. Rishi Kant , who runs Shakti Vahini, says, “Delhi has emerged as a major destination for these girls. Most of them are taken there to placement agencies with no registration, etc.”
Source: 1,000 Children Missing, Jharkhand Emerges Trafficking Hub
Address: https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/1-000-children-missing-jharkhand-emerges-trafficking-hub-748793
Date Visited: 24 April 2022
One of the main crusaders against human trafficking in Jharkhand is an Ursuline nun by the name of Sister Gemma Toppo, who is the founder of a rehabilitation centre for victims of human trafficking in Ranchi, Asha Kiran. During the Conference on ‘Tribes in Transition II”, I had invited her to give a talk on “Human Trafficking in Tribal India: A Focus on Jharkhand“. […]
Today she is a well – known figure in Ranchi and has also been awarded the “Jharkhand Samaan” in 2015.
Courtesy: Dr. Ivy Hansdak, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Jamia Millia Islamia University New Delhi (email 25 March 2017)
Gang of traffickers busted in west Delhi, 8 women rescued
Times of India, New Delhi, 24 March 2017
Delhi Police and Delhi Commission for Women have busted a gang of traffickers. […] The women were beaten by the couple when they refused to conceive children. […]
Source: Gang of traffickers busted in west Delhi, 8 women rescued | Delhi News – Times of India
Address: https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/gang-of-traffickers-busted-in-west-delhi-8-women-rescued/articleshow/57800092.cms
Date Visited: 24 April 2022
The recent rape of an Adivasi woman in Bengaluru was one of many incidents of suffering that workers had endured over the decades. […] As per a study on human trafficking, the state of Jharkhand has emerged as India’s trafficking hub with thousands of tribal women and girls being trafficked out of the state each year to Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and beyond [while] human traffickers are also involved in many cases of missing children.
Source: “Rights Groups Call for Probe Into Trafficking Networks After Rape of Adivasi Migrant Worker”,
URL: https://thewire.in/rights/human-trafficking-adivasi-worker-bangalore
Date Visited: 9 October 2022
[…] The eastern state of Jharkhand has many things to offer. While there are the obvious exquisite, traditional handicrafts – from baskets and metal artifacts to weaves – there is something else that this region is known for – it’s a hub for buying and selling girls. Trafficking is a roaring ‘trade’ here and it’s the unsuspecting girls and young women who fall prey. […]
Some are lured with good clothes, food and toys, others are assured that their families would get some much-needed money. However, once they leave their village, they are sold to agents who may take them anywhere across the country – from Delhi to Chennai, Punjab to Goa.
In some instances, the girls may be sold as “brides” in states with a skewed sex ratio or trafficked to the Middle East where they end up being enslaved as paperless, bonded labour. Others become forced organ donors, surrogate mothers and sex slaves. Of course, wherever they are, for their families and community back home, they have simply disappeared without a trace.
Statistics reveal that there are over five lakh [half a million] women and children trafficked every year in India and over 20,000 children are from East India alone. In 2013, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime flagged Jharkhand as one of the most vulnerable states in the country. In fact, according to Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), of the 58 girls they managed to rescue from the Rangia Railway Station in Assam, a well-known transit point for trafficked children, 18 were from Jharkhand.
One BBA activist, on the condition of anonymity, talks about the route that is often taken to transport the girls and women, “It stretches out from Jharkhand into Chhattisgarh or Odisha. From there, the agents literally play tag with the girls, taking them to various parts of the country, or the world. The agents are extremely well-connected with each other together. It’s like a cartel. Clearly, unless this nexus is broken, there won’t be much change.”
Indeed, what’s truly disheartening is that this human rights violation continues to happen despite stringent laws in place. […]
So, what is it that continues to fuel this illegal ‘trade’? Activists peg the blame on ignorance and poverty. Indeed, they are convinced that the root of all trafficking is poverty and marginalisation. The tribal hinterland is filled with families for whom hunger and destitution have been a way of life for generations. They have no money, no prospects, no real access to education and gainful employment.
In some villages, there are no teenagers left behind – they have either been trafficked or left in pursuit of greener pastures. […]
Typically, the price paid for a girl ranges between Rs. 1 lakh to Rs. 4 lakh. Occasionally, it can go up to around Rs. 8 lakh. Most of them are sent to work as domestic help and they are nearly always sexually abused or raped by the employees of the placement agencies or their employers. The women are then forced to have the baby, which is sold to childless couples. The agency owners are known to hold auctions for the unborn foetuses. […]
Source: “How Timely Intervention Is Saving Jharkand’s Girls” by Kirthi Jayakumar, TheBetterIndia.com, February 27, 2016
Address: https://www.thebetterindia.com/47120/child-trafficking-india-jharkand-sula-anjali-ahan-tribal-development-foundation/
Date Visited: 24 April 2022
Possibly India’s best known face against child labour, Kailash Satyarthi shares this year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistani child rights activist Malala. He and his organisation, Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) — the Save Childhood Movement, have single-handedly brought to centre-stage the debate on child rights in India.
Mr. Satyarthi and the BBA have so far freed 80,000 children from servitude, including bonded labourers, and helped in their successful re-integration, rehabilitation and education.
Officially there are only about five million child workers in India, but NGOs and others say the actual figure is ten times as much. […]
The Delhi-based Satyarthi (60) has been a persistent campaigner worldwide on social issues involving children. […]
Source: “Kailash Satyarthi: The activist who made child rights fashionable” – The Hindu, 10 October 2014
Address: https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/kailash-satyarthi-the-activist-who-made-child-rights-fashionable/article6488855.ece
Date Visited: 24 April 2022
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