Rescued girl faces risk of being trafficked again

The 15-year-old girl, who was earlier this week, rescued from a flat in Gurgaon where she was being routinely abused by a couple, is yet to go back to her home in Jharkhand's Gumla district. Currently in a protection home in Gurgaon, the minor's rescuers are less bothered about the delay in her being taken back and more concerned about the possibility of her being trafficked again. This, according to them will not be the first time when a rescued victim of domestic abuse would fall into the trap of traffickers who now have turned large parts of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Odisha into 'slavery belts' of India.

According to officials of Jharkhand government, in Gumla district alone, a total of 587 cases of human trafficking have been reported since 2014.The other trafficking affected districts include Garwah, Sahibganj, Dumka, Pakur, West Singhbhum (Chaibasa), Ranchi, Palamu, Hazaribag, Dhanbad, Bokara, Girdih and Kodarma. But what sets districts like Gumla, Lohardaga, Khuti and Simra apart from all the others is the poor government outreach in the face of decades old Maoist insurgency.

"A lot of working couples as well as joint families these days prefer domestic helps from other states so that they could stay at their residence 24x7. So they approach these illegally operating 'placement agencies' . The increase of number in these so called placement agencies makes it evident that the demand for cheap labour is growing by the day," said a Crime Branch official said.

Not being paid enough is only one of the injustices that these children endure. The 15-year-old told police that she was served no food for hours together and beaten up regularly. In her statement, the girl said that she used to be beaten up with things ranging from brooms, cutlery and leather belts. On some occasions her head was banged against the wall. She was also locked up when the couple would go off to attend parties.

Rishikant of Shaktivahini, the NGO which alongwith Haryana police rescued the 15-year-old minor, told dna that an increasing number of minors rescued by their organisation in the last few years have turned out to be from states which face abject poverty. In most of the cases, Rishikant said, the minors are brought to major metropolitan cities of India including Delhi with the proper consent of the parents who are lured by the idea of money and other modern amenities.

"Sadly in some cases we found out the minors facing extreme levels of poverty themselves opt to travel to distant towns where they work as domestic help in households. They are routinely abused and paid a paltry sum of money or they end up in the notorious forced-sex trade," he said.

A Rapid Assessment of Domestic Workers in 8 districts (the most affected by migration) were surveyed by ATSEC Jharkhand and Research Plus Group, Ranchi which concluded that 70 per cent of the total migrant women and girls are forced to join the flesh trade

The findings of the study indicated that most of the trafficked victims are below 20 years and many of them are children. Many of them undergo slave-like conditions and earn way below minimum wages and the national Capital is one of the most preferable destination of traffickers.

Alakh Narayan Singh, a member of the Child Welfare committee in Gumla said traffickers are more organised now as they are well aware of the growing demand of cheap labour. "They roam around the village on their motorcycles or cars. They wear expensive clothes, carry a mobile phone and wear goggles to impress both the children and their parents. They tell them that all their wealth they have is because they work in big cities," said Singh.