Legal agencies can penalise pimps

In an attempt to break the shackles of prostitution, the Supreme Court has directed the legal services authorities to take penal action against perpetuation of sex trade by pimps and by parents who don’t want their daughters to top selling their bodies for money.

“Unless this nexus between the traffickers, pimps and the brothel owners, together with the family at times, is broken, successful rescue and rehabilitation becomes difficult,’’ a bench of Justice Markandey Katju and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra said on Wednesday.

The judges also asked a panel of lawyers to find out whether the Union government had put in place a number of welfare and rehabilitation schemes for those who were ready to quit the sex trade.

“We request the panel to investigate whether these schemes exist largely on paper only, or whether they have been actually implemented,” the court said.

Economic advisor to the ministry of women and child development Sangeeta Verma told the panel that under the UJWALA Scheme sex workers were being rehabilitated. For sex workers who do not wish to go back home another programme STEP had been implemented, she added.

“Poverty is the main factor which pushes vulnerable women to prostitution,” counsel for the government said.

Representative of a Mumbai-based NGO Prerana, Priti Patkar, told the court that the agency has rehabilitated 4,973 sex workers between 1998 and 2010. The rescued women were given vocational training and made economically self-sufficient, she said.  Women trained by Prerana have found employment in mobile creches, petrol pump fillers, catering and hospitality, beauty care and fashion designing.