Thirty-nine children were rescued and 20 alleged traffickers were arrested in a raid carried out by the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit of Delhi Police Crime Branch in coordination with a non-government organisation at Anand Vihar Railway Station in Delhi on Thursday.
According to a volunteer of the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), the children, aged between eight and 14, are from different parts of Bihar and Nepal and were travelling in the Seemanchal Express.
“They were travelling in small clusters in seven to eight different coaches of the train and most of the children were carrying fake identity proofs,” he said. The children were being trafficked to Delhi, Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir to be employed in construction,
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Following the raid, the rescued children were produced before the Child Welfare Committee.
Explaining the various hurdles in checking repeated cases of child trafficking, Rajmangal Prasad, former chairperson of the South Delhi CWC, said: “The Government has serious shortage of human resources to tackle human trafficking. Lack of coordination between the labour department, which is responsible for rescuing the victims, and the Women and Child Welfare Department, which deals with their rehabilitation, often results in improper handling of the situation as recue and rehabilitation are closely linked.”