Campaign Against Bride Trafficking (INDIA)

Amma, said the police, had been a commercial sex worker for more than 20 years. She came to Mumbai from Karnataka along with her mentor and got involved in the flesh trade. "Now, she provides girls to brothel owners in the city on a hefty commission," said a police officer. All the rescued girls are around 20 years old. "Amma's agents work in Andhra Pradesh and lure the girls with the bait of good jobs such as beautician, sales girls in shopping malls, house maids in rich people's flats and so on and bring them to Mumbai. Later, these girls are handed over to brothel owners," said another officer.

The raid was conducted jointly by activists of International Justice Mission (IJM) and the police.

If MCOCA is applied, this would become the first such case under the stringent law. MCOCA is usually used against gangsters & terrorists.  Source

Rehana Khatun (name changed), a student of Class X, was sold off to a brothel a few months ago. Rescued by police, the girl recalled to Metro at a village community centre in East Midnapore how she had been duped. “My father was sick for quite sometime and we had no money. A woman called Lakshmi Haldar who lived near our house promised me a zari worker’s job in Diamond Harbour. My mother did not want me to go but I couldn’t bear to stay here anymore. I went with Lakshmi. We stayed in Diamond Harbour for a day after which they put me and 13 other girls on a train. “In case anyone questioned us on the train, we were asked to say that our parents were in the next compartment. At one station, police started questioning us. We said as we were told but the cops found none. So they took us to the police station. “I learnt the place was Pune. An officer told us we had not been brought for jobs, we had been sold off. The police sent us to an ashram. I was so scared. It was eight months before I finally returned home.” This is just one of the many horror stories from young boys and girls who routinely fall victim to trafficking in cities like Calcutta and its surrounding areas. In June, a doctor couple in Baranagar were sentenced to 10 years for beating their 11-year-old domestic help to death in 2006. But most cases go unreported, and the culprits unpunished. It’s little wonder that 11-year-old Parbati Doloi of Dhandhalibarh village at Contai in East Midnapore, four hours from Calcutta by road, never got justice. Swapan Panda, the general secretary of NGO Kajla Janakalyan Samity in Contai, said a local agent had taken Parbati to Panipat to work in 2005. After two years, he told her parents that Parbati had died in hospital after suffering an electric shock “while operating a washing machine”. The Calcutta arm of child rights organisation Save The Children and the Kajla Samity contacted police and demanded her body back. Parbati’s father and two NGO workers went to Panipat, too, but were heckled by goons and forced to cremate the body there. The 11-year-old — 18-year-old, according to the death certificate issued by a Panipat hospital — is believed to have been raped. “Even a few years back, dalals and recruitment agencies worked openly in these villages. One was called BMC. They gave the youngsters application forms and ID cards and took them to Calcutta. During Durga Puja, the teens would come home wearing good clothes. One even had sunglasses!” said Panda. The villagers thought their children were doing good jobs. “It was only when social workers dug a little deeper that they realised that BMC stood for Bashon Maja Corporation (Utensil Washing Corporation). The children were all working at roadside stalls and in homes,” he said. According to Panda, agencies like BMC work clandestinely now because of greater awareness about trafficking. “The agencies usually place ads to scout for householders. Once the deal is struck, the agency demands one year’s wages in advance. So, if the monthly wage is Rs 2,000, the agency gets a lumpsum of Rs 24,000 per worker even before he or she starts work. Of that, the worker’s family receives hardly Rs 500 a month, that too after gaps of six to eight months.” But the youngsters are not only placed in households. Arpita Panda, a project co-ordinator with Kajla Samity, explained. First, girls and boys are separated. The boys are sent to hotels, roadside stalls, construction sites and quarries. The smaller boys, who have little, nimble fingers, are sent to work in imitation jewellery workshops — many of them in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra. The girls are segregated into three categories: a) bad looking — permanent domestic workers; b) average looking — temporary domestic workers; c) good looking — very temporary domestic workers. Once the second and third category girls are fed and clothed better and get accustomed to city life, they are sold to brothels or put up in rooms to work as hotel call girls. Some are supplied to highway dens for truck drivers. Another common way of trafficking is through fake marriages. Members of the Daryapur gram panchayat in East Midnapore said local dalals keep an eye on the most vulnerable families in the villages and lure their young with job promises. Panchayat member Supriti Misra said some are lucky and end up with decent employers. Others come back with horror stories. Some don’t come back at all. But what happens when a child labourer returns home? Social worker Arpita Panda speaks of child labour schools under the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) that run bridge courses to help these kids catch up. But since awareness is low, many rehabilitated children don’t end up attending these schools. Also, NCLP teachers lack the training required to deal with kids who have been through trauma. Every school dropout is a childhood lost. So, the next time you see a neighbour employing a kid below 14 at home, or you spot a tot washing utensils at a roadside teastall or come to know of a worker being ill-treated or confined by the employer, never mind if he or she is above the legal working age, speak up. It’s the least you can do.

At 774 girls per 1,000 boys, Jhajjar district in Haryana has the country's worst sex ratio in the 0-6 age group. Two of its villages-Behrana and Dhimana-have incredibly low sex ratios of 378 and 444 respectively. In the same age group, Haryana has over four lakh fewer girls than boys-4,07,370 to be precise. The gap was 3.31 lakh in the last census. Over all, the state has 1.35 crore men, compared to 1.18 crore women. A difference of 17.57 lakh. In 2001, the figure was 15.83 lakh.
The reasons are obvious. The assumption is that girls are a burden and it's coupled with burgeoning ultrasound centres-1,174 now-mostly functioning clandestinely. "You can get a woman for Rs 30,000 any day while a well-bred buffalo costs Rs 70,000," says Ajit Singh, 45, a bank employee. He gets approval from four other friends taking turns at smoking the hookah at a chaupal. "In fact, getting a girl could cost you less but you have to spend a lot on fares travelling to far off places such as Assam," adds Ranbir Yadav, 42, a local landlord.
Medically terminating an unwanted pregnancy costs between Rs 1,000 and Rs 20,000 and the mushrooming of non-registered centres has only fuelled the menace of female foeticide. Not surprising in a land where the saying goes: "Chora mare nirbhag ka, chori mare bhagwaan ki (son of a doomed dies, daughter of a blessed dies)."
What's shocking is that women are often responsible for continuing this ghastly practice. "Believe me, women are mostly responsible for it," says Jaipal Singh, 42, a former soldier and now a farmer in Behrana, one of the 6,759 villages in Haryana. "Nurses or auxiliary nurses and midwives (ANM) get in touch with pregnant women and take them for detection and then termination of pregnancy. We men are generally kept in the loop but don't care to know where it happens and how. Of course, they have our consent." Behrana has a population of nearly 8,000 and is dominated by Jats. In every neighbourhood here, one will find a serving or a retired soldier. The contempt for daughters is universal. "Don't blame us," says Chand Ram, a Behrana octogenarian and an ex-soldier. "Blame the system. Even parents of MBAs or post-graduate girls with jobs have to give away a luxury car as dowry. What's the point in having girls? We don't need girls." Argues Umed Singh, 73, a farmer, "If we hate daughters, it's not without reason. What do you do with them? You send them out for education and they only bring a bad name to the family."
Strange in a state where several women have brought national glory. Haryana produced astronaut Kalpana Chawla. Miss India World Kanishtha Dhankar, 22, comes from Jhajjar. Though Mumbai is her birthplace, she has her roots in Kasni village and her father Raj Singh Dhankar, a commodore in the Indian Navy, often visits the village with his family. "It's an extremely sad state of affairs in Haryana that never gave women the status they deserved. Women can actually do much better than men. It's a cause of concern for all but people like you and me do nothing about it. We need to educate them," says Kanishtha Dhankar. Only last year, Haryana's girls had done the state proud by winning laurels at the Commonwealth Games in Delhi and then the Asian Games in Guangzhou.
Absurd logic abounds in the region to justify the decreasing female population. In Dhimana, which has nearly 190 households, residents refuse to believe that foeticide is behind the skewed sex ratio. "It's God's gift that most of the children born in this village are boys," claims Dhimana village sarpanch Om Parkash, 70, a bachelor. Varinder Kumar Narula, 67, headmaster of Sunrise High School, offers another reason: "It has to do with diet. People eat well here and so give birth to boys."
The state officials though make a valid point. "The ultrasound centres are the single largest factor behind the skewed sex ratio," says Director General (Health Services) Narbir Singh. "We do our best but the problem is that most of these illegal activities take place in unregistered ultrasound centres that operate with small devices, making it difficult for us to catch them. But unless people have the will, the problem cannot be rooted out." The will to tackle the problem doesn't seem to be there. "In 90 per cent of the cases where a couple is going for a second child, they opt for a sex-detection test," says Narinder Popli, 43, a Jhajjar businessman.
It was long believed that things would change with literacy. The latest census has deflated that theory as well. Jhajjar has a literacy rate of over 80 per cent. Mewat, with the lowest literacy rate of 56.1 per cent and considered the most backward district in the state, has Haryana's highest sex ratio at 906 females to 1,000 males.
"Literacy and modernisation have worsened matters. People are aware of abortion as well as sex determination options now and it has become much more acceptable now in society," says Ranbir Singh, consultant with Nilokheri-based Haryana Institute of Rural Development. "In places such as Jhajjar, land prices are very high and people don't want their daughters to get a share of property that they are legally entitled to."
The skewed sex ratio has had a social impact. It's causing a huge bride shortage. Theoretically, it should have checked dowry but a large number of those who get married demand hefty dowry. At many places, barter marriages are taking place; people marry their daughters and in return get a bride for their sons. Those who cannot get brides locally are buying them from Assam, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Bihar and other poor states. "I know we won't get married and it's very depressing," says Manoj Kumar, 21. "We keep talking about it. But you need a job to get a wife. We don't see either of the two happening," adds Mandeep Ahlawat, 19.
The bias against girls, rooted in short-term economic considerations, is slowly but surely leaving behind long-term scars that Haryana will find difficult to heal. A lot of its men may just be forced to stay single with brides hard to come by.
INDIATODAY
 

A bench of Justices H S Bedi and C K Prasad released the HIV positive sex worker on bail for six months on a plea made by her counsel Gurdeep Singh, who had come to the apex court after dismissal of her bail plea earlier by the Bombay High Court.

Lodged in Pune''s Yerwada jail since May 13, last year, the sex worker had been convicted on various offences under provisions of the Indian Penal Code and the Prevention of Immoral Traffic Prevention Act for procuring minor girls and forcing them into prostitution.

As per the bail plea filed by Singh, the woman had been first arrested on November 17, 2006, following a raid conducted by Pune Police at her brothel in the city.

The raid was conducted at the instance of some civil society workers, who had tipped-off the police about minor girls, procured from far-flung areas in Nepal and elsewhere, and having been forced into prostitution.

Police had rescued four to five women and nine minor girls from a hidden cell in the building. The girls had told the police that they were brought to Pune with assurance of employment, but were sold at the brothel.

The trial court convicted the sex worker in May last year, ordering the woman to be taken into custody. Earlier, she had been released on bail during her trial.

In the bail plea, Singh pleaded that irreparable damage would be done to her client''s health if she is not released on bail at the earliest and provided access to proper medicare.

Contending that the high court "has pathetically erred in rejecting the bail application," the counsel pleaded that the judicial order on his client''s bail plea needed to take into account the fact that she needs utmost care, love and affection and the best possible medical treatment.