More than 160 trafficked Nepalis rescued after earthquakes

SILIGURI, India: Law enforcement agencies in northern India have rescued at least 160 Nepalis trafficked across the border since two powerful earthquakes struck last year, a senior Indian official said.

The twin quakes in April and May killed more than 8,800 people and injured tens of thousands in the impoverished Himalayan nation. Around two million were left homeless.

Following aid agency warnings that human traffickers could prey on vulnerable survivors in the aftermath of disasters, authorities in India’s Uttar Pradesh state passed an order directing areas bordering Nepal to be vigilant.

“The day the earthquake happened, I went to my office and issued a sensitisation letter to all the district magistrates and superintendents of police in all the seven districts which border Nepal,” Kamal Saksena, home secretary for Uttar Pradesh state, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“Then we conducted video conferences with all of them and asked people from all the relevant ministries such as women and child and labour and other departments to all attend so that there was communication and coordination.

Trafficking was rife in Nepal even before the earthquakes, with an estimated 12,000 Nepalese children trafficked to India every year, according to a 2001 International Labour Organisation study.

Activists said risks were much higher after the quakes when traffickers or ‘ brokers’ duped devastated families who had lost their homes and breadwinners to hand over their children with the promise of a monthly salary and a good job in India.

Yet the reality is very different. Girls and women not recruited into prostitution are sold as domestic slaves in India and other countries. Boys are taken into forced labour.

Saksena said authorities provided training for more than 4,000 people, including police inspector generals, district magistrates, railway police, border forces, child protection officers and shelter home staff.