Mumbai: Maya* remembers picking up a bottle of rat poison, intending to end her life. She put it down that day, because she remembered her mother and two younger sisters back home in Satara. What had driven her to consider taking that extreme step?
It had started when a neighbour had taken her to Mumbai, to meet a woman who she was looking for live-in house help and offering ₹1200 a month, food and clothes. For the then-16-year-old, this was a very attractive proposition: it would let her save money and maybe later resume her studies and become a lawyer. At her prospective employer’s home, she remembers drinking a glass of water, then everything went black. She woke up in a tiny room, naked, with hair and blood around her on the floor. That room, not more than a box, really, became her prison. From then on, she was given tranquilisers every day, and every day, men raped her. This went on for months.
Ayesha* was 24, and lived in Malegaon. A local man named Shabbir, someone she had nurtured a love for since childhood, sought her father’s permission to marry her. Her father, who managed to eke out a living on ₹500 a day doing tailoring work, agreed, happy that someone was willing to marry his daughter — the eldest of three — and she was only too happy to honour her father’s wishes.
After the ceremonies, the couple moved to Mumbai. In the first night in what she thought was her new home, a man who looked to be in his fifties walked into the room; scared, she tried to escape, but her beloved Shabbir closed the door on her from the outside, and the older man raped her. The next night it was another man. The night after that, another. It was only then she realised that she had been sold. “I had no place to go.” She says. “I used to grind my teeth, pull my hair, cry, shout. But there was no one to hear me. I was given no clothes, no food for weeks. Then a woman began coming in to drug me, so I would be able to help her make more money through sex. She would give me medicines that made me very drowsy and fat.” It took a few weeks for it to sink in that she was in a brothel and had been sold into sexual slavery.
Maya’s and Ayesha’s stories are similar to those of many women and children, usually from villages and smaller towns, who are sold, usually to buyers in cities.
The Ministry of Women and Child Development told Parliament in March this year that 19,223 women and children were trafficked in 2016, up from 15,448 in 2015. The National Crime Records Bureau reported the number of detected cases of women being trafficked rose by 22%, to 10,119, in 2016. It also registered an increase of 25.8% under crimes against human trafficking (6,877 in 2015, from 5,466 in 2014), and 27,994 women were rescued from human trafficking during 2014-2016 (till June).
In many respects, Maya and Ayesha were more fortunate than most women who are trafficked. Both were eventually rescued. Ayesha was treated in a government hospital before moving to a shelter home with other survivors. Now 26, and on the road to recovery, she now lives alone, works for a bottle-making factory and aims to buy her own house one day. She also wants to become a social worker and rescue other trafficked women. The people who ran the brothel where Maya was imprisoned are in jail. She is now 19, has a job in a garment factory and lives alone; she likes to cook, watch movies and shop when she has the spare cash.
It seems a travesty to call them fortunate, given their ordeals, but those who escape or are rescued are a small minority: “Only 7% of women are rescued,” says Sunitha Krishnan, rape survivor and crusader against human trafficking, who runs Prajwala (which means ‘eternal flame’) a shelter home for victims. “93% are still trapped in hellholes.”
What the laws say
India has reasonably strong anti-trafficking laws.
Article 23 of the Indian Constitution prohibits trafficking of human beings and forced labour. India has also ratified several international laws that protect vulnerable citizens against trafficking. In March 2013, Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code was amended to include India’s first definition of human trafficking. According to this definition, human trafficking occurs when one person (the trafficker) uses force, fraud or coercion to induce, recruit, harbour or transport another person (the victim) for the purpose of exploitation. It also states that exploitation shall include any act of physical exploitation or any form of sexual exploitation, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, or the forced removal of organs. The Immoral Traffic Prevention Act, 1956, penalises trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation with a penalty of seven years to life imprisonment.
Swati Chauhan, who presided over the first special ITPA court in Mumbai says, “Once an accused is granted bail, it becomes very difficult to nab him. The case remains pending, which results in his de facto acquittal. There is a Bombay High Court judgment that had given conditions that must be taken into account while granting anticipatory bail and bail to the accused in cases of human trafficking.” A Supreme Court judgment on January 7, 2014, says that if there is an acquittal in the case, reasons have to be cited, whether it was due to the negligence on the part of the police, or of the public prosecutor.
Stronger enforcement needed
The onus is on the police to register a water tight case so that the perpetrators and traffickers don’t escape justice. The biggest challenge, according to V.V. Lakshminarayana, Additional DGP, Admin, Maharashtra, is that “we need sensitivity from our officers, so that they can understand the magnitude of the problem. Collection of evidence is a big problem. The other challenge is to make the witness depose in court because she has already given her statement to the police but to do it again with all the social stigma becomes difficult.”
Things are now slightly better, Mr. Lakshminarayana says: “The Malimath Committee has said that in cases of trafficking we don’t have to go by the usual mantra of having to prove beyond reasonable doubt, but can change to ‘preponderance of probabilities’. This will go a long way to make a solid case.”
State and local governments have partnered with NGOs and international organisations to train Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTU), integrated task forces comprising trained, sensitive officials of the police, members of the Women and Child Welfare Department, and also reputed local NGOs. Maharashtra started with six AHTUs and has six more now. The plan is to have one AHTU in each district.
Busting the rackets
Part of the problem starts earlier, with what gets reported: the trafficking figures are, almost certainly, lower than the reality. Families of trafficked women tend to be scared to register a complaint. The fact of women being trafficked often only comes to light after a raid.
Girish Kulkarni, who has been working in the field for 28 years and runs Snehalaya, a set of shelter homes for survivors at Ahmednagar, says raids happen only when the police get information about commercial sex work, which tends to be from an NGO. Sometimes, brothel-keepers fight with each other, and one gives the police a tip-off about the other. Or a pimp is caught by the police and he reveals information.
The rescue, Mr. Kulkarni says, needs sensitivity. A rescued woman “is petrified and does not understand what is happening. There needs to be a person from an NGO, a counsellor or a woman social worker, who can make the women understand that they don’t need to get scared, and who can educate them about their legal rights. The cops are supposed to give the victims rescue kits, including a towel, soap, clothes, a bottle of water, because usually a victim has not been able to bring her belongings with her.”
Rescued women and children are then taken to shelter homes run by the government. “But many times, the condition of the homes is so appalling that they run away, and the [subsequent police and legal] case gets weakened, resulting in the acquittal of the accused.”
For those rescued, it is the beginning of a long rehabilitation process.
Beyond rescue
Section 357A of the Criminal Penal Code provides for the Victim Compensation Scheme. Every state government is required to frame a scheme, in coordination with the Central government, to set up funds to provide compensation to victims from crimes, such as rape and human trafficking. The minimum amount of compensation for rehabilitation of victims of human trafficking is ₹1 lakh.
Mr. Kulkarni says, “Maharashtra is very poor in granting compensation to the victims. I have seen hundreds of cases where the money is never received.” When a court orders compensation, he says, it is only at the time of conviction. “This takes years, so by the time the money has come, it makes no sense to receive that amount.”
Monetary compensation of some kind is only one part of what is needed. “Being a victim of commercial sexual exploitation brings you mental retardation,” Ms. Krishnan says. “It takes away your decision-making powers, it alters your social behaviour, because you have lost all your confidence and self-esteem. There are scars not just on your body but on your mind, it causes traumatic brain injury because you are under constant abuse: sometimes a woman is raped 40 times a day.” Victims have lived in a world of intimidation and fear, she says, and before they can reintegrate into society, they need interim support. There may be sexually-transmitted diseases, and often, because victims are forced to consume alcohol or other substances to dull their senses — which takes its toll on their physical and mental health too — there may be withdrawal symptoms to be dealt with after a rescue.
Rehabilitation must be holistic and sustainable. There must first be psychological healing, to rebuild self-worth. Then there is the economic factor: often, families do not want to accept rescued victims back into their fold, so they need to be equipped with employable skills and education, so that they can become independent and have access to a good standard of living. These will then help towards social reintegration before the process of restoration can be anywhere near complete.
Shelter homes play a critical role, providing survivors with trauma-focused therapies, medical help, education, skill development, and reconnecting them with society.
The Ministry of Women and Children Development has 302 ‘short stay homes’ and 289 Swadhar Homes to support women who are trafficked, whether rescued or runaways from brothels. Between them, they can house up to 43,370 women. In March 2017, the Women and Child Development Minister of State reported that 286 more projects have been sanctioned, including 162 protective and rehabilitation homes. These homes will accommodate another 8,100 victims.
Mumbai is better equipped than many other places. Melissa Walavalkar, Director of Justice Solution at IJM, the India branch of the International Justice Mission (which works for victims of human trafficking), says, “In Mumbai, the role of the NGO is so massive that there is higher responsibility. Procedures are followed, and the situation is pretty good, but the condition is different outside the city.”
Ms. Krishnan thinks the government needs to play a stronger role, one that isn’t confined to immediate relief, though that is important. “After we have achieved this, we need to come out of age-old ways of livelihood; stitching and knitting are not sufficient any more. We need to come up with innovative ways to empower them.” Women who Prajwala has helped now run security agencies, work at TV channels, have learnt skills like carpentry.
Making it better
The Ministry of Women and Child Development has drafted the Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill 2016, which will be sent to Parliament for approval. Among its provisions, a very important one is that it envisions a fund to deal with anti-trafficking cases. It also mandates the reporting of a case within 24 hours to the District Anti-Trafficking Committee, and protection and special homes for short-term and long-term rehabilitation support.
P.M. Nair, a former IPS officer and now a professor at TISS, who has worked for 38 years in the area of human trafficking, says we must “go beyond just collection of numbers: we need to get to the trafficker; that investigation is never done.”
Dr. Nair sees the need for “a co-ordinating body at an all-India level. Someone senior, not a bureaucrat, who is sensitive towards the issue must co-ordinate with all nodal officers. There is a need to strengthen the AHTU by giving them professional training and making them accountable. That it is not the duty of a ministry; NGOs should come forward. We can have a training programme to go beyond just documentation.”
* Names of survivors have been changed to protect their identity
