Rise in Indians as potential victims

LONDON:THE number of Indian citizens referred as potential victims of trafficking and modern slavery in the United Kingdom has increased from 100 in 2016 to 140 in 2017, ranking India among the top ten countries in the list, new figures showed on Monday.

India is ninth in the list topped by the United Kingdom. The 2017 figures for Indian citizens released by Britain’s National Crime Agency include 90 for labour exploitation, 25 for domestic servitude, 18 for sexual exploitation and seven categorised as unknown exploitation.

Charity organisations such as Southall Black Sisters and Kalayaan deal with victims of modern slavery from India and South Asia. Many victims are brought to the UK under the “domestic workers in a private household visa”.

Those referred as victims of modern slavery and human trafficking came from 116 different nationalities, with UK, Albanian and Vietnamese nationals remaining the most commonly reported victims, the NCA’S end of year summary for 2017 said.

NCA director Will Kerr said: “We are now dealing with an evolving threat. The criminals involved in these types of exploitation are going into online spaces... to enable their criminality.

“We are also seeing increasing crossovers between slavery and organised immigration crime outside of the UK. Often the same criminal networks are involved in transportation, and migrants are vulnerable to labour and sexual exploitation during their journeys and after.”