By Dr Swati Jindal Garg
The idea of liberty, justice, equality and opportunity that forms the basis of any democratic nation’s strength is destroyed by the very existence of human trafficking in that country. It targets the most vulnerable sections of the society and steals their fundamental right to life, right to dignity and right to freedom. It also attacks the community at large by taking away the security and well-being of the society. Any form of trafficking in people—trafficking for forced labour or trafficking for sex—is a blot on the society and cannot be tolerated by any country.
It is said that those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves. And to bring this thought to action, the Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Care and Rehabilitation) draft Bill, 2021, likely to be presented in Parliament soon, has elicited a great response from all arenas, including organisations that have been working in the field of anti-human trafficking tirelessly for many years now. The draft bill has also brought a ray of hope to all those who have suffered owing to the various lacuna in the legislation due to which trafficking in persons, especially women and children, has reached an all-time high. The draft Bill also talks about providing care and protecting and rehabilitating the victims while ensuring that their rights remain intact and also giving them a supportive legal, economic and social environment. The draft Bill also calls for stricter prosecution and endeavours to make sure that no offender is allowed to go scot free while ensuring that the victims are provided all the help that they need.
As per the draft Bill, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has now been made the national investigating and coordinating agency which shall be responsible for preventing and combating trafficking in persons along with other offences that have been enumerated under this Bill. Most of the inputs of the proposed Bill are said to have been received from the feedback and the critique of the 2018 Bill by the Ministry of Women and Child Development, so it can be said that the current draft Bill showcases the will of the masses.
The draft Bill defines human trafficking as an organised crime with international implications and attempts to move away from conflating trafficking with sex work, while upholding the right of survivors to rehabilitation and compensation independent of criminal proceedings. It also proposes a common law to address all forms of human trafficking, be it sexual exploitation, slavery, servitude or forced labour.
The Bill also makes a concentrated effort to remove all inconsistencies between various legislations that are applicable to different forms of trafficking currently.
Just like all coins have a flip side, this Bill, despite being an outcome of a lot of thought and consideration, still seems to be ridden with various maladies. The Bill needs to make an effort to strengthen the role of Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTU) in different states for better law enforcement as it is still not clear how the NIA as a nodal agency will gather information and intelligence from different parts of the country through AHTUs at the district and state levels which have been mandated for conducting inter-state investigations in cases dealing with human trafficking and budgets allocated to them.
Today, the problem of human trafficking is widespread and extremely difficult to control. West Bengal continues to be the hub of human trafficking and there have been multiple instances wherein young children were found to have been sold by their very own family members. The financial hardship that has been aggravated due to the pandemic induced economic slowdown is also contributing to this ailment.
To make matters worse, a trafficking survivor even after returning home, still faces severe stigma from society and is shunned by her own people.
Such trafficking survivors have to ultimately take shelter in shelter homes which further disassociates them from regular society and alienates them from their people.
To add insult to injury, the traffickers who are often acquitted due to lack of evidence, make sure that these survivors are re-trafficked. The survivors have already been alienated from their own society which treats them like an outcast and refuses to accept them and hence they have nowhere to go but to return to the traffickers.
Human trafficking is the worst form of power abuse. As a country that wants to emerge as a world power and prides itself on its human resource, utmost efforts should be made to ensure that no human being in India is preyed upon for trafficking purposes. All the agencies of the government must work in collaboration to make sure that human trafficking is eradicated.
Not only government agencies, but individuals, businesses, faith-based communities, academic institutions, NGOs, the media, along with law enforcement agencies, should also tie up against human trafficking as all are stakeholders and hence have an important role to play. A lot more can be accomplished if all the stakeholders work in collaboration with each other rather than in opposition in order to address the insecurities that exist among the vulnerable and marginalised communities that face the threat of human trafficking.
—The author is an Advocate-on-Record practicing in the Supreme Court of India,
Delhi High Court and all district courts and tribunals in Delhi
