IF YOU HAVE TEARS...
... shed them for these underage girls and the hundreds of thousands like them who are trafficked into sex slavery— while society remains silent
FARAKH ALI GAYEN, 22, is just over five feet tall, appears quite frail and in general cuts an unassuming figure. He is the son of a teashop owner in South 24 Parganas, the largest district in West Bengal and one of the 250 “most backward districts” in the country in 2006. But Farakh was doing alright for himself. He had Rs 13 lakh in his bank account, a small fortune for a young man in this rural district. Now in police custody, Farakh admits he kidnapped and sold girls for a living. The younger, the better. He’s not the only such modern day slaver either— since 2014, 16,000 girls have gone missing from South 24 Parganas. In the past 18 months, according to NGO Shakti Vahini, 300 girls have been rescued and 50 traffickers arrested. Kailash Satyarthi, child rights activist and Nobel laureate, began a 35- day march across the country on September 11 to demand action against such trafficking. Satyarthi said he was waging an “all- out war on rape, abuse, and trafficking”. The sexual exploitation of children, he added, “[ is] a moral epidemic.... Our silence is breeding more violence”. Last month, in a meeting with President Ram Nath Kovind, Satyarthi called for a national children’s tribunal to be set up.
Farakh confesses it was the prospect of easy money that attracted him to the business of slavery. He envied his sister’s lifestyle in Delhi— expensive flat, fancy clothes and, always, bundles of cash at hand. “I was told I could also end up being rich like Radhe, my brother- in- law,” Farakh says. “All I had to do was deliver young girls from the village and I would make Rs 20,000 to Rs 50,000 for each.” He cruised around local villages on a Hero Karizma motorbike, flashing his Rs 40,000 mobile phone, his watch and sunglasses. For girls in an overwhelmingly poor area, he embodied a dream, the possibility of an escape to a better life.
Babita, 16, was a typical victim. Farakh got her number from a mobile recharge point— traffickers, it appears, routinely procure such information for as little as Rs 100 per number. It took him 15 calls to get Babita to meet him at Mathurapur railway station, from where she was taken to Delhi. Like many victims of trafficking, Babita was unconscious, knocked out by something slipped into a drink or snack. In Delhi, Farakh handed her over to his sister, who sold Babita to a brothel in Agra. “I was kept in a building with small rooms and no windows,” Babita says. “We would be locked up for most of the day, let out only to entertain customers. On some days, there could be 15 or 20 customers. If we refused anyone, we’d get a beating. I used a customer’s phone to tell my family that I was in Agra.”
The family told Shakti Vahini and a rescue operation was planned. Babita was unrecognisable, utterly changed from the girl in the photograph provided to the rescue team. Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini has over 20 years of experience rescuing girls from similar situations. He says that children are often injected with hormones and drugs to hasten the onset of puberty. This makes them put on weight and look older than they really are.
Babita and six other girls from her district were rescued in mid- July. Six out of every 10 girls rescued from traffickers are from West Bengal. The enslavement and sale of children, usually to brothels, is a thriving business. According to a conservative estimate from the Union ministry for home affairs, nearly 100,000 children go missing every year. As quoted in a report on commercial sexual exploitation by Satyarthi’s NGO, Global March Against Child Labour, the lower estimate of the size of commercial sexual exploitation industry in India is $ 35 billion, around 2 per cent of the GDP. “This black money,” Satyarthi said, “propels… the most heinous crimes against girls and women.”
Most victims are from India’s most impoverished states, including Assam, Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh ( see One Way Ticket). In recent years, the sex trade industry has grown alongside disposable incomes, with brothels now found in a variety of city neighbourhoods. Over 90 per cent of those trafficked for sex are female, according to Global March Against Child Labour. India is a supplier, transit point and destination for victims of sex trafficking, meaning girls are both trafficked from and to India and that traffickers hold girls in the country before sending them to other parts of the world. Although victims from India are trafficked to some 18 foreign countries, a 2016 report by HAQ Centre for Child Rights revealed that 90 per cent of trafficking in India is internal, and that the victims were overwhelmingly from India’s lowest economic and social strata.
The HAQ report argues that increased traf- ficking between states is the result of better connections, more mobility and rapid urbanisation. Many ‘ agents’— more accurately, pimps, madams and kidnappers— offer victims fictional jobs in some nearby urban agglomeration. Another ploy used by slavers, particularly in northern states such as Punjab and Haryana, is the fake marriage proposal. Atiya Bose of Aangan, an NGO that helps rehabilitate victims of sex trafficking, says that financially vulnerable families are particularly susceptible to such proposals. So relieved are these families that the prospective groom appears uninterested in lavish wedding ceremonies or dowries that they don’t see that lack of interest as a red flag. Often, the ‘ groom’s family’ is even prepared to pay the girl’s family for her hand in marriage. In such sham marriages, victims often end up being forced to serve as servants to the families they have married into— before being sold onward.
And as Internet access becomes widespread, traffickers are even making use of social media sites like Facebook as recruiting tools. Shakti Vahini’s Kant says he recently rescued a girl from Nagaland after she had already boarded a plane, headed towards a trafficker who had created a fake Facebook profile and made a series of false promises to her. Kant adds that in Jharkhand alone, he knows of 300 WhatsApp groups dedicated to sex slavery.
For traffickers, Kant says, Jharkhand is an ideal hunting ground. The state’s population is poor and poorly educated; tribal girls as young as 10 are being sold to brothels. From Khunti district alone, 25 kilometres from Ranchi, part
of the so- called ‘ Red Corridor’ at the heart of Maoist- Naxalite insurgency, 79 traffickers were recently arrested. Global March Against Child Labour reports that 70 per cent of Indian girls sold into the sex trade are between 16 and 18 years old and kept in captivity for between 12 and 18 months on average, complicating the process of rehabilitation. The age of the victims hints at another unpalatable fact of Indian sex trafficking— many of the victims are likely sold into slavery by members of their own families. The traffickers who buy the victims are young too, often just 18 or 19 years old.
Three years ago, a notorious trafficker, Panna Lal, and his wife were arrested in Delhi. The two were charged with various offences related to trafficking minors from remote parts of Jharkhand. Accounts in various media pegged Panna Lal’s fortune at Rs 66 crore from allegedly having ‘ placed’ some 10,000 girls from Jharkhand, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh in ‘ work’. The money movement in the trade is astounding. Global March Against Child Labour estimates that brothels make anywhere between Rs 1.5 crore and Rs 14.4 crore per year, while the industry as a whole generates well in excess of Rs 2 lakh crore in illegal money ( see graphic The Commerce of Sex Trafficking). These enormous sums might explain why the political response to such modern day slavery has been so tepid. In 2003, a study by the National Human Rights Commission, the United Nations Development Fund for Women and the Institute for Social Sciences estimated that 20 per cent of the brothel population is minors.
That so many children can be at risk while so little is done about it is outrageous. However, many of those working to make a change say that there has been a gradual evolution in the attitude of both police and government authorities. Ajeet Singh of Varanasi- based NGO Guriya has helped rescue and rehabilitate trafficked children for nearly three decades. In 1988, he ‘ adopted’ three children from a sex worker, paying for their upkeep. He was 17 at the time.
He is currently fighting cases against 803 traffickers across Uttar Pradesh. Singh knows he is a marked man. His home in the narrow lanes of Khajuri colony in Varanasi doubles as his office, complete with towering stacks of files. It is protected by an imposing steel door and a sophisticated home security system. There is an iron gate, too, essential for a man forced to homeschool his daughter because of threats directed at his family. He has received death
threats and his workers have been beaten up, but the state hasn’t seen fit to provide him with any protection. Still, he says, “earlier there was no concept of sex trafficking. Now, at least, people are talking about it. And talking is the beginning of a solution”. Singh believes that the efforts of civil society have made a difference. “The attitude of the authorities when I started protesting,” he says, “was ‘ Such women are like this only, just throw them in the lock- up.’ We fought those
MANY OF THE VICTIMS ARE SOLD BY MEMBERS OF THE FAMILY; TR AFFICKERS TOO ARE YOUNG, OFTEN JUST 1 8 OR 1 9 YEARS OLD
attitudes, we fought to make this a human rights issue and now we have anti- human trafficking units, now there is an advisory committee and a new law is on the anvil. Jahan kuchh nahin tha, wahan itna kuchh hai ( Where there was once nothing, there is now something).”
Even such cautious optimism can wear thin sometimes. In May 2015, eight Puducherry police officers were sacked, charged with raping four children who had been rescued from traffickers. Still, Triveni Acharya of Rescue Foundation, an NGO that helps rehabilitate child sex workers in Mumbai, cites the evolution in the attitude of the police force as the single most positive change she has witnessed. “Earlier, the police and politicians seemed to believe that prostitution meant there would be fewer rapes. Thankfully, the police are more sensitised now. Training programmes have helped, as has the anti- trafficking cell and the special court. After Nirbhaya ( the victim of the December 16, 2012 Delhi gang rape), the law has become much stricter. If a little girl is rescued, immediate action is taken.”
Better policing, or at least better intent, is also becoming more evident in South 24 Parganas. Female police officers have visited some 3,200 schools to talk to students about trafficking. Schools now have drop boxes to enable schoolgirls to complain about harassment. Kant says Shakti Vahini and the police are putting together ‘ Swayamsiddha’ teams, including students and teachers, to educate girls about human trafficking, to show videos and organise seminars. “We educate girls,” he says, “to recognise danger, to be wary.” They’re even roping in IT students to teach schoolgirls about protecting their privacy online. Some 350 schools in South 24 Parganas have already enrolled in the Swayamsiddha programme.
Much of Atiya Bose’s work at Aangan is also about prevention, about creating community watch groups that understand how traffickers operate. But much remains to be done. “It is impractical,” she says, “to expect the govern-
to be everywhere. We show communities how to be vigilant.” But for all the good work, the outlook remains dismal. Despite admitting to the lack of credible data, the Union ministry for women and child development told Parliament in March that nearly 20,000 women and children were trafficked in 2016, a rise of 25 per cent over the previous year. Some officials argue that this rise is a result of increased awareness and reporting rather than an actual increase in trafficking. Whatever the truth, the conviction rate for traffickers, at 2 to 5 percent, is unquestionably appalling.
According to Roop Sen of Sanjog, an organisation working for child protection, gender justice and social equity, investigators have little incentive and fewer tools to catch traffickers. Acharya agrees, saying: “When girls are brought to Mumbai, for instance, from other states or countries, the Mumbai police has no jurisdiction to go there. Inter- state investigation and cooperation has to improve.” Meanwhile, a draft anti- trafficking bill has been the object of sustained criticism, including from sex workers, for inadequacies ranging from a lack of clarity, to equating voluntary sex work with trafficking.
Supreme Court lawyer Aparna Bhat argues that any new law must have “the child at its centre. Currently our law is focused on prosecution but the protection of victims is largely missing.” Everyone agrees that a new law is necessary.
A stated objective of the trafficking bill is to create an institutional mechanism under the central government focusing on the issue of human trafficking with input from all stakeholders under the guidance and authority of the
ONE THING WAS MADE CLEAR, SHE COULD NEVER R EFUSE A CUSTOMER. ANY RESISTANCE LED TO BEATINGS, SE XUAL TORTURE...
Union ministry for women and child development. Currently, there is an Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act, 1956, a Protection of Children against Sexual Offences Act ( POCSO), 2012, a Juvenile Justice Act, 2015, and various sections of the Indian Penal Code that deal with organised crime. The multiplicity of laws has meant a tussle over turf between the Union ministry for home affairs and the women and child development ministry.
Without a coherent, unified strategy to combat human trafficking and a clear demarcation of roles and responsibilities, there is bound to be uncertainty. The paucity of data also hinders evidencebased planning. Sen points out that the police “ends up conducting generic raids because they do not have necessary intelligence”. Rehabilitation is another challenge. Because of police shortcomings, minors sometimes spend as many as three to five years, according to some es- timates, in captivity. A return to normal life and society is so difficult after such a long spell in sex work that many older girls go back to prostitution even after they are rescued. They lack emotional or infrastructural support and their time as sex slaves is often compounded by substance abuse issues.
“You need to give these girls support,” says Bose, “we need to allocate funds for rehabilitation.” Over e- mail, Maneka Gandhi, the women and child development minister, asserts that “rehabilitation of the victim forms a critical part of the bill”. There is in the bill, she writes,
“a complete structure including the details of a victim compensation fund. The objective is to ensure that victims of trafficking get suitably reintegrated.” The bill is with the cabinet, the ministry says, “and an early decision is expected”.
In Varanasi, Guriya runs a rehabilitation centre for the children of sex
workers in Shivdaspur, the city’s red light district. “All the children here,” says Manju, Singh’s partner at the NGO,
“are the children of pimps and prostitutes. Some of these children are so bright but they are discriminated against when it comes to admissions into colleges and institutions of higher study.” Many of the children are forced to lie to have a chance at success and the prospect of building different lives for themselves and their mothers. Rajni Gupta, for instance, is 18 and dreams of getting a job at a bank; Shabana, in the second year of her BA, wants to be a police officer; and Rani who is no longer in college, teaches Urdu and Arabic to 40 children in the neighbourhood.
There are indications that protecting children from sexual exploitation is finally becoming a national policy priority. The proposed Juvenile Justice Act provides for a child protection officer at every police station and child welfare committees at the district level. Anganwadis, rural mother and childcare centres, can also be mobilised to play a role in the protection of children. Perhaps, as the proposed new anti- trafficking law is debated, there will be an acknowledgement of the need for better communication between ministries, the need for a comprehensive review of the existing judicial machinery, the need for more effective use of technology, including surveillance of brothels and hot spots, the need for mapping the source and destination areas for trafficked children, and the need for an interlinked database, like the National Intelligence Grid, among all agencies.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, the Rajya Sabha MP from Karnataka, has been at the forefront of the dialogue. “There must be effective identification and coordination,” he says, “among government departments at every level, sharing information and acting on it. Because the enormity and gravity of the issue of India’s lost children cannot be overstated.”
Coherent anti- trafficking legislation would be a start. Or even executing the provisions of existing laws. In Kurnool on his yatra, Satyarthi described the implementation of POCSO as “pathetic”, criticising particularly the “slow pace of enforcement”. How quickly will Farakh, and traffickers like him, with lakhs in their accounts and the fancy accoutrements they use to impress young girls, be convicted and jailed? Will it stem the rot? Urgent action is necessary if we are to give all girls an opportunity to develop to their fullest potential.