Why human trafficking law is too little, too late

While existing laws are not enough to deal with human trafficking, the proposed law has serious lacunae, which need to be fixed, say experts

On May 30 this year, Maneka Gandhi, Union minister for women and child development, released a draft Bill on human trafficking - Trafficking in Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill, 2016. The draft, which is likely to be tabled in Parliament by the end of the year, enumerates long-pending changes in law. The present legal framework to address human trafficking is an amalgam of laws, making it near impossible to investigate crimes properly, protect victims and repatriate them after appropriate rehabilitation. However, survivors and activists believe that in its present form, the draft has serious lacunae that would ensure that victims could continue to be wronged not only by traffickers but by the new law itself.

First, a look at what the draft has got right. Its proposal for stricter, non-bailable warrants for traffickers is definitely a step in the right direction. Consider this testimony. "When I ran away from the brothel where I had been forcibly held, the court made me stay in a jail-like shelter home for one year," says 20-year-old Kamini, a sex trafficking survivor in Mumbai. But, the brothel keeper got bail in two days flat! Further, since trafficking cases are currently handled by the police departments of individual states, it is tough to track traffickers even across state boundaries, leave alone international borders. "The proposal for constituting a national-level agency to investigate trafficking is a good idea," says Triveni Balkrishna Acharya of Mumbai-based Rescue Foundation that rescues and rehabilitates survivors of sex trafficking.

Many believe, however, that a central agency will be useless unless it is given enough teeth, especially to handle cross-border cases and large, organised networks of traffickers. Eighteen-year-old Drishti's story is a case in point. "A girl befriended me in Dhaka and said I'll be able to earn better money in Mumbai," says she. "We crossed the Indian border through paddy fields where she handed me to some other people. Then we reached Kolkata where somebody else took charge, provided me a fake ID and took me to a Mumbai brothel. "After rescue, Drishti couldn't even identify her original 'friend' in Dhaka, let alone the confusing network of people she had met thereafter. At Rescue Foundation's shelter home in Mumbai, Drishti's story is a common one. Most girls mention going through several hands before landing up in city brothels. The need of the hour is not just a national-level anti-trafficking agency or more stringent laws against traffickers, but greater collaboration with neighbours such as Bangladesh and Nepal from where much of the trafficking originates.

FINDINGS OF THE GLOBAL SLAVERY INDEX 2016 REPORT

• The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that 45.8 million people are subject to some form of modern slavery in the world today
• The countries with the highest estimated prevalence of modern slavery by the proportion of their population are North Korea, Uzbekistan, Cambodia, India and Qatar
• There are more than 18 million people or 1.4 per cent of the total population, who are living in conditions of modern slavery in India

WHAT THE DRAFT LAW PROPOSES, IN A NUTSHELL

• Address trafficking through prevention, protection and rehabilitation of victims
• Create a national-level agency to investigate cross-border trafficking
• Impose harsher penalties and make trafficking a non-bailable offence
• Create a rehabilitation fund to assist victims to reintegrate into society

Other sections of the draft law, notably rescue protocols and rehabilitation measures, need further fleshing out. And first, the law has to define who a trafficked person really is. Currently, the police use the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act to raid brothels and either arrest or 'rescue' all the women inside. Everyone inside is treated either as a victim, or an accused. The law does not discern between an adult who may be in a trafficked situation (servitude, debt bondage, forced prostitution) and an adult who may not be (she may or may not have been trafficked into prostitution at some time but may not be currently living in confinement, debt bondage or be forced into prostitution). After rescue, the draft Bill says every survivor has the right to rehabilitation. It also proposes an Anti-Trafficking Fund for this. Experts such as Roop Sen of Kolkata-based Sanjog, a technical resource organisation working on children and women's rights, believe that trafficked survivors need long-term rehabilitation, not in shelter homes, but in their own milieus. "The draft has failed to specify the exact roles and responsibilities of protective homes in this regard," says Acharya. Repatriation of survivors from other countries is another issue that the draft does not clarify, as it does not specify the agency responsible for this process. Nasreen, a 24-year-old Bangladeshi survivor, has been in Rescue Foundation's shelter home for 10 months. "I left my one-year-old with my widowed mother and came to Mumbai for better job prospects," she says. "Instead, I found myself in a brothel from where I was eventually rescued, and am now waiting indefinitely to be repatriated."

As Nasreen waits anxiously for Indian and Bangladeshi agencies to verify her address and ascertain that the 24-year-old (who has sworn she will never return to prostitution) has some family in whose custody she may be released, she knows the process could take months, even years. "All I want is to see my son again," she says.

If the draft Bill is not modified suitably, Nasreen, Drishti, Kamini and others like them might receive some justice; but, it will be a case of too little, too late.

(All names have been changed)