Why illegal recruitment agents across India get away with human trafficking

States failing to investigate and prosecute networks that dupe and exploit the vulnerable

The “ecosystem” of human trafficking that dupes people and sends them to foreign countries as illegal immigrants must be dismantled, said Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Washington earlier in February.

 

He was talking about illegal recruitment agents, as they are called in the government’s Parliament replies, that take lakhs of rupees from vulnerable individuals to send them abroad where they are promised better opportunities. When flights carrying deported illegal immigrants from the United States (US) landed in Punjab recently, it sparked discussions on the scale of the problem and enforcement mechanisms failing to rein in the agents.

 

Data from Parliament