Below 1% trafficking victims get compensation

Some outfits in West Bengal take up cudgels to find out the lacunae through RTI pleas and creating awareness among survivors, writes

Sultana (name changed), a human trafficking survivor from West Bengal, is one among only three in the state to get compensation from the State Legal Services Authority (SLSA) under the West Bengal Victim Compensation Scheme between 2012 and 2019 — that too after a legal tussle of four years.

“In order to prove that I had been a victim of human trafficking, I had to go through multiple rounds of questioning by police. This was followed by a legal tussle and multiple rounds of hearing at the district court, which did not yield any result. I filed the case in 2016 and I received a compensation of about

~4 lakh seven months back after battling it out in the Calcutta High Court," says the resident of South 24 Parganas district.

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), West Bengal topped the country’s trafficking list in 2018, with 3,500 cases being recorded between 2012 and 2019.

As far as the entire country is concerned, less than one per cent of trafficking survivors have received compensation during the period, says an action report by Kolkata-based research and anti-trafficking NGO, Sanjog — prepared by a team of five lawyers.

The team now plans to ramp up their research efforts by filing applications under Right to Information (RTI) Act and producing a nationwide ground report, which will cover victim compensation orders and disbursal of compensation by the District Legal Services Authorities (DLSAS) and State Legal Services Authorities (SLSAS). They also aim to produce findings of reports from National Legal Services Authority (NLSA) in the near future.

One of them, Vipan Kumar, tells Business Standard the NCRB data shows 38,503 victims across the country filed cases with respective state police between 2010 and 2017. “We filed applications under Right to Information (RTI) Act with the state and district legal agencies to find out how many of these victims received compensation. The RTI information reveals only 107 survivors applied for compensation since 2011 and courts awarded compensation to another 102. Out of these 102 survivors, the respective DLSAS disbursed compensation to only 77 survivors," he says.

The DLSAS and SLSAS are responsible for providing compensation to the human-trafficking victims, he adds.

He further says, "During our research, we found most of the victims did not even know that they were eligible to get compensated by the government. The onus of providing proof of human trafficking falls on the victim and it requires submitting copies of multiple FIRS - one lodged at the police station, under whose jurisdiction, the victim was rescued, and the police station, under whose jurisdiction the victim was trafficked. The task of proving to the legal authorities that they have been victims of trafficking is arduous and uphill. The DLSA and SLSA appoint lawyers to help the victims avail legal help, but more often, these lawyers are ill-informed. The High Court lawyers are mostly interested in prosecution and they charge high fees."

The stakeholders involved in the process of rehabilitating the victims - like shelter homes, where they often stay for months before being resuscitated - often do not inform them about compensation.

"One of the major roadblocks in compensating is the lack of documentation. Not all cases of trafficking are reported, not all pleas of victim compensation are documented properly by the state DLSAS and SLSAS," Kumar adds.

Subhashree Raptan, co-ordinator of Goranbose Gram Bikash Kendra in West Bengal's South 24 Parganas, said victims have to deal with social and internal stigma throughout the long-drawn process of fighting a legal battle to get their compensation. “Access to lawyers, attending repeated hearings only to recount their ordeal to prove that the rescued victims are eligible for compensation is an uphill task. We are struggling for justice, official rehabilitation and compensation," says Raptan who also works with Canning-based Bandhan Mukti Survivors Collective.

A victim of human trafficking, who was rescued from Pune, says she did not know of any such scheme. “Also travelling all the way to Kolkata for repeated hearings becomes economically unsustainable. The lawyers couldn't help me out. The survivors' network established by Bandhan Mukti Collective helped me."

Budgetary allocation

Kumar further says a major question in the RTI applications was about the budgetary allocation towards compensating human trafficking victims and how much of that has been used. “Answers by the Odisha SLSA to this RTI query revealed that the state had spent 104 per cent of the budgetary allocation towards compensating the victims. Karnataka SLSA responded that entire budgetary allocation towards compensating the victims was utilised. The Bidar DLSA of the state, however, said only 50 per cent of the sum set aside was used to compensate victims,” Kumar says.