Bharat Rakshak

To:
Her Excellency Ms. Mamata Banerjee, Hon. Chief Minister, Government of West Bengal
Shri M. K. Narayanan, His Excellency, Hon. Governor of West Bengal
Sri. Sanjoy Mitra, IAS, Hon. Chief Secretary, Government of West Bengal
Mrs. Bandana Bandhopadhyay, IAS, Hon. Home Secretary, Government of West Bengal
Mr. Naparajit Mukherjee, IPS, Hon. Director General of Police, West Bengal
Mr. Kuldiep Singh, IPS, Hon. Additional Director General & Inspector General of Police (O), West Bengal
National Human Rights Commission
Print Media and TV Media, (State, National and International)
National Commission for Scheduled Castes
National Commission for Women
Amnesty International
Dr. Surjya Kanta Mishra, Leader of the Opposition, West Bengal Legislative Assembly
Honourable Madam / Sir,

This is an urgent petition, requesting the Government of West Bengal (Paschim Banga), India to take strong action against the Corrupt Police Officials of Malda district, who are Selling my Teenaged Daughter into Sexual Slavery.

I respectfully urge the Honourable Chief Minister Ms. Mamata Banerjee to help release my daughter Payel (kidnapped when she was an underaged minor girl) from the clutches of her criminal kidnappers who have bribed the following local police officials with large sums of money.

1) Superintendent of Police, Malda District – Kalyan Mukhopadhyay
2) Additional Superintendent of Police, Malda District – Shyam Singh
3) Officer-in-Charge of Kaliachak Police Station – Subhabrata Ghosh
4) Investigating Officer of the case - Pradip Sarkar

With anguish and unbearable pain, I am forced to point out that sad reality of Malda today - Not a Single Police Officer, CID Officer, or Court Police of Malda District is honest.

Every police officer in Malda district, from the Superintendent of Police to the Additional SP and down to the Investigating Officer and the Officer-in-Charge of Kaliachak Police Station, has received his “share” of the “bribe money” paid by my daughter’s kidnappers in return for official collusion with these criminals who are bent upon inflicting unbearable pain on my minor-aged daughter.

My precious daughter Payel was kidnapped when she was 17 years old, still a minor girl. My husband Sujay Mandal and I are only one among many such hapless parents of kidnapped girls in the Sujapur Kaliachak area of Malda district. Ultimately, we too could not save my beloved daughter Payel from the clutches of her kidnapper Usman Ghani and his criminal family. Usman Ghani is the son of notorious fanatic criminal Ashraful Sheikh.

As my husband and I were desperately running from pillar-to-post to recover our daughter, the aforementioned police officers of Malda district told us nonchalantly that Payel will return as soon as she will be of 18 years of age (which is the legal age of conversion/marriage). It is very clear that the police is well aware of Payel’s whereabouts and has been bribed by Usman's family.

The greed, apathy and indifference of these unlawful police officials makes us wonder if West Bengal is a part of India (where Indian law is upheld) or a part of East Pakistan (where Shariah is upheld).

This year, Payel was to appear for her Higher Secondary examination. In fact, Payel was afraid of being abducted on the street by Usman and his family who had set their lustful eyes on her. Hence, out of fear, she had stopped going to school for 5 months. She did not even appear for her preparatory test exam of Higher Secondary school out of fear of being kidnapped.

For her own safety, we (her parents) relocated her to her maternal uncle’s house in Maheshtola village of Samsherganj PS in the neighbouring Murshidabad district. All our efforts went in vain. And, Payel was kidnapped from Maheshtola by Usman and his 2 fanatic criminal cohorts on 27 November 2012 evening. I fear that my daughter Payel has been sexually brutalized, violently gang-raped and psychologically traumatised during her ongoing captivity in Usman’s den. Since then, these 9 months of frantic search efforts by us (Payel’s) parents didn’t yield any results. We have now become almost bankrupt by this time as we have been spending all that we had saved (for Payel’s education and marriage) to search for our missing daughter. And, in the meantime, her father (my husband) has lost his job, as he had to search for our abducted daughter full-time.

After the first 5 months of searching in vain, seeing no success in our quest, we tearfully submitted a detailed petition to West Bengal State Women Commission in April 2013. Simultaneously, proceedings in Malda Court proceedings have been started by the legal team of human rights activists (Hindu Samhati) on our behalf. The human right activists led by Sri. Tapan Ghosh have put pressure on the police to act immediately. Due to their active efforts and pressure, Ashraful Sheikh's house was raided by police in April 2013. Before the raid, our daughter Payel was surreptitiously removed from Ashraful's house with the connivance of the aforementioned corrupt police officials. It is clear that the corrupt Malda police leaked the raid information to the criminal kidnappers in advance. However, as an eye-wash, Ashraful had been briefly arrested only to show that some action has been taken. Ashraful had been denied bail by the court, and was granted 3 day police custody for investigation/interrogation. We think it is sheer eye-wash, because the Malda police appealed for police custody only because their superior officers/higher-ups from Kolkata intervened.

The corrupt police kept us waiting and did not return Payel back to us. The police let Payel stay with her kidnappers until she turned 18 (on 12 August 2013). Afterwards, on 20 August 2013, the police finally produced Payel to Malda court. But the corrupt Malda Police did not even inform us (Payel’s parents) about her production in court. The corrupt Malda Police informed us (Payel's parents) only after Section 164 statement before Judicial Magistrate given by Payel was over.

That is why Payel's 164 Statement before Judge is important. Faced with no way out, Payel was forced (under immense duress and psychological pressure) to tell the Judge that she went to Usman, the criminal rapist, according to her own wish. This is a complete farce and travesty of justice, as my teenaged daughter Payel is suffering from post-kidnap trauma disorder (a.k.a. "Stockholm Syndrome").

All sorts of terrorising tactics have been applied by the kidnappers (Usman, Israful & others) on us (Payel’s parents). Over 100 fundamentalist-criminal goons of our locality were present in the court on that day. They were inside the court room whereas I (Payel's mother) was being denied entry inside the courtroom by the corrupt police and goons.

While in court, my hapless daughter Payel tried in vain to tell something to me (her mother.) But Payel was prevented from doing so as Usman's mother grabbed her. When in the court lock up, I (Payel's mother) was finally able to meet my daughter Payel for only 2 minutes. Payel signaled to me that something is dropped on ground. Alas, in my tear-filled anxiety, I could not understand Payel’s indication. Surely, Payel had dropped a piece of paper on the ground. But I (Payel’s mother) was forced to ignore the signal because I was simultaneously compelled to cajole and plead with folded arms with the corrupt police and Usman's mother to be able to talk to my own daughter.

Now Payel has been kept forcibly in Usman's house. Usman is currently in jail. Shortly, Usman will be released on bail, and then will forcibly marry Payel as soon as he is released from jail. Given his criminal background, we are highly apprehensive that Usman may use Payel to satisfy his sexual lust and then discard her by selling her to a cross-border sex-trafficking ring.

Even today, even Usman's other relatives and neighbours are not allowed to enter his house. WHY? Because - Payel is struggling there for freedom. My daughter Payel is suffering this unbearable pain caused by the weakness of the society of West Bengal to prevent such atrocities against its own daughters.

We urge the Honourable Chief Minister to ensure 100% enforcement of the law and save my helpless daughter from being gang-raped, forcibly converted and married off to her fanatic kidnappers before being sold into cross-border prostitution.

The hard reality is - we cannot protect, we cannot save our daughter from the clutches of fanatic criminals. They are first class citizens and we are second class citizens of our own country. Even after parting away with two- thirds of our beloved Bengal, we are second class citizens in this remaining one-thirds. We have no human rights here.

Honourable Madam Chief Minister: We voted for you. We support you. We love you as our leader. Please save us. Please save our precious daughter. Please help us get justice for Payel.

We humbly request you to heed our tearful request.

We sincerely hope that you will help prevent Malda district of West Bengal from turning into East Pakistan, by sacking the aforementioned corrupt officials and urging the local authorities to implement the law by arresting the culprits, returning our daughter Payel to us (her parents) with honour and putting an end to the ongoing criminal-police nexus in Malda district to safeguard our family and other minority Hindu families of Sujapur Kaliachak area.

Thanking You,
Sincerely Yours,

Sincerely,

http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-new ... 19920.aspx

She was married off at 12 for fear of getting trafficked and narrowly escaped from getting “sold” by her inlaws.

Nothing could deter this indomitable woman’s fight against human trafficking. Finally, she has won international recognition.

While the West Bengal Women’s Commission has feted her as an anti-trafficking crusader, Monika Sarkar, 32, will now rub shoulders with leaders from various fields at the International Visitor Leadership Programme (IVLP) in the US next year.

“I’m happy my efforts have got international recognition. I am happier still to see the smiling faces of parents who have got back their daughters,” says Sarkar.

Sarkar, who grew up amid constant fear of trafficking, began her crusade almost a decade ago, joining some NGOs in North 24-Parganas district.

The mother of two started her fight collecting data about missing girls from in and around her village, Sayestanagar. She discovered a startling fact - more than 5,000 minor girls had been missing in the past few years and yet hardly any police complaint was filed.

“Police would refuse to register missing complaints saying the girls have willingly gone out for work. It was difficult, but we continued our fight. As more women joined the fight, police had to relent,” said Sarkar, whose efforts have now brought down trafficking cases.

Her efforts at educating families against traffickers - mostly local youths - soon took the shape of a movement.

With the help of a citybased NGO, she now runs her own Samya Shramajibi Samity.

NGO Prantakatha has guided her efforts to end trafficking in the district.

It has not been an easy path for the woman who now lives with her two daughters and works as an artisan. She left her husband some years ago after he and her in-laws almost sold her off when she failed to bring dowry.

“The lure of a job for their daughters is too tempting an offer for the poverty-stricken population here. Moreover, the traffickers are often powerful and it is very difficult to fight them,” says Sarkar, who has been attacked several times.

While her efforts have forced the administration to act - nabbing traffickers and rescuing the trafficked girls in the district - her battle postrescue is no less challenging. She tries to get the families and society accept the girls, most of them having been pushed into the flesh trade.

Counselling the families and the rescued girls are an integral part of her campaign. Social pressure is a big obstacle.

“While some rescued girls are living a new life, have got married and have families, others had no option but to return to the flesh trade as their families refused to accept a girl who was a sex worker,” said Sarkar.

Some girls have voluntarily returned to the sex trade preferring a more “affluent life” to the daily struggle for meals. Sarkar has not forgotten the importance of education.

Having dropped out of school after her forced marriage, she later resumed her studies. She is currently pursuing her graduation.

Jarita wrote:

panduranghari wrote:Human Organ trafficking is a curious issue.

How can a doctor do this to another human? The problem is not restricted to Nepalis trafficked into India, for organs, mainly to Chennai and Bangalore BUT is widespread all over the globe.

Indian doctors are very highly skilled but in the drive to earn money, the service to fellow human is taking a serious backseat.

Having a organ donation register or something similar will ensure organs will be donated to those who need, rather than relying on this illicit trade.

Actually an organ donation register can also create problems. If I am not mistaken in Sri Lanka cornea donation after death is mandatory leading to an over supply which is the real solution to the problem.

Perhaps for every Indian citizen it must be obligatory to donate atleast 2/3 organs of choice upon death. This will create an oversupply situation and do away with the heinous crimes done to steal organs.

Garooda wrote:
Or promote positive stem cell research for organ harvesting based on the DNA which will drive the demand down (mostly from western countries)

ramana wrote:jarita, Do we have enough datat to create a mind map of the nodes that influence/control human trafficking in India?

I think this is a key activity which if shut down will bring many criminals down.

Anand K wrote:Siddharth Kara's book identifies certain areas of India where bonded labor and caste repression is still rampant. There is a place in Bihar which supplied IIRC 12000 women per year. Mischa Glenny's McMafia has some good details on the Balkan/E. European human trafficking also.

Apparently there are certain regions in the world where there is an existing "infrastructure" and "tradition" of human trafficking- Sindhupalchok in Nepal, certain districts in Bihar, Indramayu in Indonesia, Chiapas in Mexico etc. Some have a history going back a couple of centuries! The East European and Balkan women have been trafficked (or entered the meat-grinder voluntarily) to all corners of the world (including a budding 19th century Bombay, as per Kara) since antiquity. Apparently kidnapping the women of enemies, raping them and trafficking them is not a new thing for the mardsof those regions. It has more to do with politics, economics and social relations than the "qualities" of the women traded. However, due to their attractive features, the Helambu women of Sindhupalchok were preyed upon by Nepalese royalty since the early 19th century. The tradition has continued down the years, except that the consumers this time range from the hoi polloi of India to Qatari Sheikhs.

BTW, one thing to note that a majority of the women trafficked from India are Nepalis.... India is a transit hub for this sort of Do Numbri too.
The numbers are astounding - one can understand the angst of the Nepalese sometimes....

When Robert Friedman, wrote this in 1996, he must not have though that the industry was there to survive and flourish with even more vigour, crime and torture and become the largest in Asia. For ages, the commercial sex trade has been the chief destination for trafficked girls in India.[ii]Sex tourism involving underage girls still remains a highly profitable business, a billion-a-year industry in 2009, with a 30 percent increase from previous years.

India is listed in the Tier II list of the United Nations which includes countries which have failed to combat human trafficking. India continues to be a source, destination and transit country for forced labor and sex trafficking. According to a report by the Ministry for Women and Child Development, India has nearly 2.5 million prostitutes in nearly 300,000 brothels in 1,100 red-light areas across the country. 90% or more estimated as in-country and 5 to 10% to cross-border trafficking, reported mainly from Bangladesh and Nepal. The routes of trafficking do not exclude Europe and specifically to UK and United States.[iii] Around 1.2 million children are involved in prostitution in India.

The trafficking of girls from Nepal into India for forced prostitution is perhaps one of the busiest slave sex trafficking routes anywhere in the world; with estimated 5,000-10,000 Nepali women and girls trafficked to India each year.[iv] An estimated 100,000-200,000 Nepali trafficked persons are in India. [v] In addition to being a destination, India is also a transit country for Nepalese and Bangladeshi women trafficked to Pakistan, Western Asia, and the Middle East and for women trafficked from the Russian Federation to Thailand. [vi] Asia –Pacific therefore, has seen ‘feminization of migration’-with more population movement being that of women. The feminization of migration gives rise to specific problematic forms of migration, such as the commercialized migration of women and girls as domestic workers and caregivers, often resulting in the trafficking of women for labor and sexual exploitation.[vii]

Much of the attention on human trafficking focuses on those who are trafficked across national borders every year, and, in many cases, forced to work as prostitutes or virtual slaves. But those numbers don’t include victims trafficked within India — a country so large and diverse that victims taken hundreds of miles away where a different language is spoken have little chance of finding their way home. There are increasing reports of females from northeastern states and Odisha subjected to servile marriages in states with low female-to-male child sex ratios, including Haryana and Punjab. Maoist armed groups known as the Naxalites forcibly recruited children into their ranks. Establishments of sex trafficking are moving from more traditional locations – such as brothels – to locations that are harder to find, and are also shifting from urban areas to rural areas, where there is less detection.[viii] Not to hide, the rise of HIV/AIDS patients and vulnerable groups. Anyone who has watched ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ the Oscar-winning movie would have seen tiny speck of this dark side of India.

This remains, despite the fact that India has a fairly wide framework of laws enacted by the Parliament as well as some State legislatures, apart from the Constitutional provisions.[ix]Poor implementation along with low conviction rates, and serious corruption adds to the problem. But all is not lost, efforts from social activists, educated citizenry and international support towards combating this modern slavery, has started showing some impact.

(A Birds eye view of the problem and efforts can be seen in the video created by the UNODC Regional Office for South Asia at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9yJWvphsa3A)

Robert I. Friedman, “India’s Shame: Sexual Slavery and Political Corruption leading to an AIDS catastrophe, The Nation, 8th April 1996

[ii] P. M. Nair, Sankar Sen, Trafficking In Women And Children In India( Orient Blackswan) 2005

[iii] India, Trafficking in Persons Report 2008. U.S. Department of State (June 4, 2008)

[iv] Koirala A, Banskota HK, Khadka BR: Cross border interception – A strategy of prevention of trafficking women from Nepal. Int Conf AIDS :15. 2004, Jul 11–16

[v] Mukherji KK, Muherjee S. (2007): Girls and women in prostitution in India Department of Women and Child Development, New Delhi, India

[vi] Joffres, C., Mills, E., Joffres, M., Khanna, T., Walia, H., & Grund, D. (2008). Sexual slavery without borders: trafficking for commercial sexual exploitation in India. International Journal for Equity in Health, 7, Pg.1–11.

[vii] The Female Face of Migration, Background Paper available at http://www.caritas.org/includes/pdf/bac ... ration.pdf

[viii] Trafficking in Persons Report 2012, at http://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/2012/index.htm

[ix] Article 23 – Article 39 of the Constitution of India The inherent provisions of these articles has been incorporated under suppression immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act of 1956(SITA) and Traffic in persons (prevention)Act 1986(PITA)an amendment to (SITA). There are 25 provisions relevant to fight trafficking Indian Penal Code, 1860!
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Jarita wrote:

Prem Kumar wrote:
quote="Singha"
'Some girls have been married 60 times by the time they turn 18
/quote

Must be voted "best whore-house accounting system ever". What do they use - SAP or Oracle?

You missed a crucial point in that article

Child sex tourism is difficult to track, but the United Nations estimates that it affects two million children every year, often in countries that are poor but have preexisting tourism infrastructure, such as Thailand, India, Costa Rica and others

.

What are the areas driving this in India? Perhaps not a topic for this thread but another thread

Dramatic scandals routinely fill India’s media headlines about some poor victim from a remote area being exploited by upper strata Delhi elites. Yet there is no investigative journalism to uncover the inconvenient facts about certain NGOs that operate what amounts to a human trafficking industry. One reason for this conspiracy of silence is that the traffickers are linked with some politically connected NGOs that make noises in the metros ostensibly on behalf of the victims. In reality the noise made serves to cover up the sinister role of NGOs in this industry that brings Christianity to the remote villages in exchange for maids to Delhi.The elaborate scheme works as follows. Christian missionaries in adivasi (indigenous, “tribal”) areas offer poor families an inducement that is hard to resist: If the family converts to Christianity, one of its young daughters will be sent as a domestic servant to Delhi or another metro.The affiliated “agencies” in the metros collect placement fees up to Rs 50,000 per maid from the household that hires them. In between the point of “recruitment” and the point of placement there are intermediaries that “sell”, transfer and move the young, vulnerable person through the supply chain. Money is exchanged at each stage.
The agencies keep relocating the same girl from one employer to another every few months in order to collect their placement fee repeatedly. This disruption adds to the trauma of the young girl. The agency becomes, by default, her only hope of security, and in the process she becomes even more vulnerable to the agency’s exploitation. Delhi alone is estimated to have several thousands of such girls being brought every year.The cultural gap between India’s adivasis and its metro elites is larger in many ways than the gap between people living in Delhi and New York. The victim often gets duped into thinking that she is headed for the good life of an Indian metro, and her parents are often hand in glove in selling her into such a scheme. The money given to the parents is a “down payment” to convert them, their daughter’s placement as maid being part of the transaction. Many churches also provide safe transfer of the girl’s monthly salary back to her parents, with a certain “donation” charged by the church for its services. All this is a package deal for “being saved”.

This end-to-end system functions like the old slave trade from Africa to America and other continents — in which the church had also played a major role. Today’s racket hides behind the mask of helping the downtrodden by finding them employment in a faraway place. By no means do I wish to imply that all abuses of maids from villages are the result of this system, but that fact that such a system exists outside the bounds of investigative scrutiny is noteworthy.In the most recent episode of this tragedy, a woman executive working for a French multinational in Delhi has been arrested on charges of committing atrocities against a girl from the Santhal tribe of Jharkhand state. The maid comes from Sahibgunj, one of India’s poorest districts. The media is having a field day sensationalising this as child labour, even after the police confirmed that documents in her village show her to be over the age of 18. The girl had worked for this executive for only 3 months, prior to which she had worked in numerous other households in Delhi since age 15. So the child labour stage of her exploitation was done under several previous employers. But there is no investigation of the previous employers. Why?The reason for authorities not pursuing the earlier employers is that the girl is a Christian convert from a very poor family; and uncovering the entire chain of events and parties involved would expose the nexus of the Jharkhand church, the political parties that use these poor folks as their vote bank, and various NGOs involved in so-called “human rights” programs. The placement agency in Delhi is run by a Christian woman with likely links to the Jharkhand Church. The media sensationalises the matter as an isolated, localised episode when in fact it deserves to be investigated as a system of mafia-like underground network.

Brinda Karat, the rabid voice of the Communist Party of India, swung into rapid action targeting the maid’s employer, but not wanting a broader inquiry into the supply network that originates in the remote villages where her party seeks support from the church and NGOs.Many other political leaders also saw opportunity in this scandal to show support for dalit communities whose votes can swing elections. These remote villages are also infested with Maoists seeking to topple the Indian state. The political stakes are high and NGOs compete to prove their worth by claiming to champion the plight of the poor. The same NGOs also raise funds under various “noble” pretexts.The media ought to act more responsibly than selling us Bollywood-style action drama. To expose the large criminal networks and attack the roots of the problem, they should emphasize some systemic changes. First and foremost, it should be declared illegal to offer employment or other material inducements for religious conversion of poor and vulnerable persons. In particular, the church, parents and agencies that are involved in peddling the labor of a person under age 18 should be prosecuted. This is the nexus where the focus of prosecution should be targeted when incidents of abuse are discovered.I have anticipated such NGO-backed crimes within India since the 1990s when I first became aware of foreign nexuses intervening in India’s so-called tribal areas. It was a Harvard Roundtable Conference on Indology sponsored by Infinity foundation where I found that Western scholars had become very interested in Indian communities belonging to the “Munda” family of languages. The thesis formulated was that the Munda people were the only indigenous peoples of India. They were first invaded by the “foreign Dravidians” coming from the Middle East, and later on both the Munda and the Dravidians got invaded by the “foreign Aryans”. Thus, Indians were classified into layers with the intention of empowering one group against the others. In my earlier book, Breaking India, I mention some important US based interventions through this type of anthropology and linguistics work.

The Santhal community where the maid in the latest scandal comes from is one of the largest communities in what is called India’s “tribal belt”. Most anthropological studies on them were done by Christian missionaries since British times. The colonial-evangelical lens used was the same as for other non-Christian peoples that were encountered outside Europe, and many of its prejudices have become accepted by modern Indians. The “tribals” are considered “pagans” because they believe in “animism”, meaning that they consider all of nature as inhabited with divine spirit. (Ironically, the latest trend among Western thinkers is to appropriate these very ideas into Judeo-Christianity, using fancy new terms like “panentheism” and “immanence” after studying Hindu philosophy on which such ideas are based.) These villages have been a hotbed for missionary activities for the past few centuries, and this intensified in 1914 when the first complete translation of the Bible into the Santali language was finished by a Norwegian missionary.Clearly, the battle for fragmenting Indians has entered a new phase. “Tribal” Indians will be increasingly exploited in various ways in the guise of bringing them human rights. The media’s framing of such episodes as “secular” crimes of an isolated kind is a shallow and inadequate treatment of what is much deeper and multilayered. This issue has far reaching implications.

The Dalits matter because human trafficking will not come to an end around the world, until it comes to an end in India.

When you make that first phone call and there is one officer for the entire tribal community and he can't respond or take evidence, and then a woman experiences racism at the hospital
..
rape and abuse have always stemmed from outsiders. It is well documented through oral tradition that prior to the European invasion, sexual and domestic violence was not accepted and virtually did not exist in indigenous society.
..
provisions that would finally allow tribal courts to prosecute non-Native people in domestic violence cases – although the House decided to write their own bill that excluded these provisions.
..
For too many Native women, rape is not a question of "if", it's simply a matter of "when"

TSJones wrote:Do the Dalits have their own reservations and police force?

...
Many of India’s enslaved have not been moved from one place to another – they are enslaved in their own villages. Earlier this year, the Trafficking in Persons(TIP) report released by the US State department had put the number of people in some sort of forced labour at an estimated 20 to 65 million : men, women, and children mainly in debt bondage to a local landowner, forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories.The TIP report cites instances where women and girls from the northeastern states and Odisha have been sold or coerced into forced marriages in states with low female-to-male gender ratios, including Haryana and Punjab and forced into prostitution.

The National Human Rights Commission, in a report last year, highlighted other cases. For Example, in Meghalaya, extraction of coal in private coal mines in the Jaintia Hills region is exclusively undertaken by bonded manual labourers who have come to work in the mines from neighbouring states to beat acute poverty.

Some of the reasons for high numbers caught in slavery in India are the difficulty in accessing protections and government entitlements, such as the food rations card, corruption or non-performance of safety nets (such as the National Employment Guarantee, primary health care and pensions) and practices of land grabbing and asset domination by high caste groups. Some of those affected by slavery in India do not officially exist – they have no birth registration or ID so it can be hard for them to access protective entitlements.

India’s NGO racket of human trafficking

By Rajiv Malhotra on October 15, 2013


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Tags: Jharkhand, Church, Human Trafficking, NGOs, missionary activity

India's NGO racket of human trafficking

Dramatic scandals routinely fill India’s media headlines about some poor victim from a remote area being exploited by upper strata Delhi elites. Yet there is no investigative journalism to uncover the inconvenient facts about certain NGOs that operate what amounts to a human trafficking industry. One reason for this conspiracy of silence is that the traffickers are linked with some politically connected NGOs that make noises in the metros ostensibly on behalf of the victims. In reality the noise made serves to cover up the sinister role of NGOs in this industry that brings Christianity to the remote villages in exchange for maids to Delhi.

The elaborate scheme works as follows. Christian missionaries in adivasi (indigenous, “tribal”) areas offer poor families an inducement that is hard to resist: If the family converts to Christianity, one of its young daughters will be sent as a domestic servant to Delhi or another metro.

The affiliated “agencies” in the metros collect placement fees up to Rs 50,000 per maid from the household that hires them. In between the point of “recruitment” and the point of placement there are intermediaries that “sell”, transfer and move the young, vulnerable person through the supply chain. Money is exchanged at each stage.

The agencies keep relocating the same girl from one employer to another every few months in order to collect their placement fee repeatedly. This disruption adds to the trauma of the young girl. The agency becomes, by default, her only hope of security, and in the process she becomes even more vulnerable to the agency’s exploitation. Delhi alone is estimated to have several thousands of such girls being brought every year.

The cultural gap between India’s adivasis and its metro elites is larger in many ways than the gap between people living in Delhi and New York. The victim often gets duped into thinking that she is headed for the good life of an Indian metro, and her parents are often hand in glove in selling her into such a scheme. The money given to the parents is a “down payment” to convert them, their daughter’s placement as maid being part of the transaction. Many churches also provide safe transfer of the girl’s monthly salary back to her parents, with a certain “donation” charged by the church for its services. All this is a package deal for “being saved”.

This end-to-end system functions like the old slave trade from Africa to America and other continents — in which the church had also played a major role. Today’s racket hides behind the mask of helping the downtrodden by finding them employment in a faraway place. By no means do I wish to imply that all abuses of maids from villages are the result of this system, but that fact that such a system exists outside the bounds of investigative scrutiny is noteworthy.

In the most recent episode of this tragedy, a woman executive working for a French multinational in Delhi has been arrested on charges of committing atrocities against a girl from the Santhal tribe of Jharkhand state. The maid comes from Sahibgunj, one of India’s poorest districts. The media is having a field day sensationalising this as child labour, even after the police confirmed that documents in her village show her to be over the age of 18. The girl had worked for this executive for only 3 months, prior to which she had worked in numerous other households in Delhi since age 15. So the child labour stage of her exploitation was done under several previous employers. But there is no investigation of the previous employers. Why?

The reason for authorities not pursuing the earlier employers is that the girl is a Christian convert from a very poor family; and uncovering the entire chain of events and parties involved would expose the nexus of the Jharkhand church, the political parties that use these poor folks as their vote bank, and various NGOs involved in so-called “human rights” programs. The placement agency in Delhi is run by a Christian woman with likely links to the Jharkhand Church. The media sensationalises the matter as an isolated, localised episode when in fact it deserves to be investigated as a system of mafia-like underground network.

Brinda Karat, the rabid voice of the Communist Party of India, swung into rapid action targeting the maid’s employer, but not wanting a broader inquiry into the supply network that originates in the remote villages where her party seeks support from the church and NGOs.

Many other political leaders also saw opportunity in this scandal to show support for dalit communities whose votes can swing elections. These remote villages are also infested with Maoists seeking to topple the Indian state. The political stakes are high and NGOs compete to prove their worth by claiming to champion the plight of the poor. The same NGOs also raise funds under various “noble” pretexts.

The media ought to act more responsibly than selling us Bollywood-style action drama. To expose the large criminal networks and attack the roots of the problem, they should emphasize some systemic changes. First and foremost, it should be declared illegal to offer employment or other material inducements for religious conversion of poor and vulnerable persons. In particular, the church, parents and agencies that are involved in peddling the labor of a person under age 18 should be prosecuted. This is the nexus where the focus of prosecution should be targeted when incidents of abuse are discovered.

At the same time, one should recognise the legitimate need for domestic servants in Indian metros. To serve this demand, agencies should have to be certified periodically that they are in compliance with all laws. This must include transparency of disclosure of the full details concerning every employee and employer served. There must be a mechanism by which the legal age of a potential maid can be formally ascertained and the agency must bear this burden prior to offering her as a candidate. All commissions and salary payments must be legalised.

The media must start educating the metro employers about the laws concerning minimum wages and others aspects. Right now most Delhi households lack such awareness, as the media has focused on sensationalism without its shouldering social responsibility or due diligence.

There are also many instances of exploitation in the reverse direction that should be noted: Elderly persons in Delhi are too often being criminally attacked by their domestic servants who threaten legal action with the help of NGOs, and thereby prevent the crime from being reported. I know of cases where a youth gang has repeatedly burglarised the house of an elderly woman living alone. The police have been reluctant to file charges because of the threat by NGOs that these youth criminals are protected as “minors”. This means tougher juvenile crime laws need to be enacted and enforced.

I have anticipated such NGO-backed crimes within India since the 1990s when I first became aware of foreign nexuses intervening in India’s so-called tribal areas. It was a Harvard Roundtable Conference on Indology sponsored by Infinity foundation where I found that Western scholars had become very interested in Indian communities belonging to the “Munda” family of languages. The thesis formulated was that the Munda people were the only indigenous peoples of India. They were first invaded by the “foreign Dravidians” coming from the Middle East, and later on both the Munda and the Dravidians got invaded by the “foreign Aryans”. Thus, Indians were classified into layers with the intention of empowering one group against the others. In my earlier book, Breaking India, I mention some important US based interventions through this type of anthropology and linguistics work.

The Santhal community where the maid in the latest scandal comes from is one of the largest communities in what is called India’s “tribal belt”. Most anthropological studies on them were done by Christian missionaries since British times. The colonial-evangelical lens used was the same as for other non-Christian peoples that were encountered outside Europe, and many of its prejudices have become accepted by modern Indians. The “tribals” are considered “pagans” because they believe in “animism”, meaning that they consider all of nature as inhabited with divine spirit. (Ironically, the latest trend among Western thinkers is to appropriate these very ideas into Judeo-Christianity, using fancy new terms like “panentheism” and “immanence” after studying Hindu philosophy on which such ideas are based.) These villages have been a hotbed for missionary activities for the past few centuries, and this intensified in 1914 when the first complete translation of the Bible into the Santali language was finished by a Norwegian missionary.

Clearly, the battle for fragmenting Indians has entered a new phase. “Tribal” Indians will be increasingly exploited in various ways in the guise of bringing them human rights. The media’s framing of such episodes as “secular” crimes of an isolated kind is a shallow and inadequate treatment of what is much deeper and multilayered. This issue has far reaching implications.

Pratyush wrote:

prahaar wrote: Bji, not doubting your claims, but would you be able to elaborate a little bit on how extensive and deep is the problem of flesh-trade. Most BRFites (numerically) would not have seen or known up-close details about this aspect of life in our society. Is this a huge number and actively encouraged by some powers in India? I was under the impression that such activities are very much under control due to the high sensitivity of police to these activities. What part of our society is the biggest victim of this? The calls for legalizing prostitution seems to suggest that a majority of the participants in this profession do it voluntarily. I was under the impression that such things in mass scale have stopped or become rare - due to the non-presence of news on this.

OT for this thread,

Human trafficking in India is a huge problem. Effecting both men and women. Ever year, thousands of women & are sold into Prostitution & Slavery. Mostly from the economically weaker parts of the country. Along with import's from Nepal & BD.

The annual report of the Woman & Child welfare dept GOI will give you an accurate picture.

Annual Report WCD 2013 Warning, that it is a 56 MB file.

The magnitude of the problem is such that a Chaiwala I know, on an intimate basis, went into depression because of the utter helplessness of the situation, he faced.

brihaspati wrote:http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... ttarget=no

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: There has been a rapid increase in the number of boys engaging in sex work in Malappuram district in Kerala, a study has found.

KP Jayaraj, a PhD student at Jamia Millia Islamia in the national capital made the revelation during a seminar here Wednesday.

The report of the research project found that even though some boys only earn Rs 10- Rs 20 for each sexual encounter, there were others who earned about Rs 800 a day.

"These are boys who belong to the age group of 16 to 18 and come from well-to-do families; they are used mostly by those in the age group 20 to 30 years," Jayaraj, himself a native of Malappuram district, said. He added that he had been noticing the sexual activity of the boys since the time he was a student there.

The seminar was held under the title "sexual violence against children", and organised by the National Alliance of Grassroots NGOs (NAGN), Shreyas Social Service Centre and Butterflies.

Jayaraj also pointed out that a pimp in his early 40s has been pushing more and more children into the trade in the past two decades. More than 2,000 children are estimated to be involved in the trade in the district at present.

State labour minister Shibu Baby John, who inaugurated the seminar, admitted to the sorry state of affairs and rued that children were falling to prey in the state's northern districts.

I know this is a women's issues thread - so if mods feel these "abuses" do not fit, remove to an appropriate thread. [Boys/men are not abused/raped - even if they do, it must be attention seeking/victimhood and an attempt to draw attention away from casteist patriarchal mass rape perpetrated primarily on minority and dalit women onlee].

To me, the police should be blamed as most victims are not confident that they will act on their complaint, as it did in case of high profile French diplomat Mazurier.

The reason is that most of the victims are from poor socio-economic back-ground with whom the police does not empathize even a bit. In India, the police are the last government organization with whom citizens want to interact.

Families of many child rape victims fear that their harassment will increase if the sexual crime is reported to police. “It is better to forget,” was a claim of a father, whose six year-old daughter was sexually abused in his own house. “Ladki ki badnami hoogi aur pata nahin police kuch karagi ya nahin (Girl will earn disrespect and I don’t know whether police will act or not).”

Fortunately, a NGO volunteer convinced the man to lodge a complaint. Initially, the police discouraged him telling him how his girl will suffer in court proceedings. When the NGO intervened, they registered a case and arrested the accused.

Many victims are not so fortunate in India. Even after disclosing their agony to parents, they are forced to keep mum and bear the trauma. And, research has shown that many victims of sexual abuse at tender age turn into assaulters when they grow up.

Even in cases, where the police finally register the case, conviction is less than 50 percent. When the court proceedings are on, getting a bail for child sexual offenders is not difficult. Several times India law enforced have received a hard slap on their face with foreign pedophiles able to leave the country after getting bail.

Such a lax enforcement of rule and insensitive police makes India a favoured destination for pedophiles. There have been documentation of children being found in improper position with foreigners in Goa but no action has been taken (Srinivasan, Sandhya 2006, ‘Rights: India Off Paedophile Destinations).

Anindya wrote:***** racket and its ramifications

The gang arrested is not an isolated one and apart from circulating videos and blackmailing innocent victims, their accommplices are also indulging in a full fledged flesh trade which has its ybiggest hub in Alappuzha. 8 persons who formed part of this gang were racket were arrested. The gang members all aged between 21 and 24 hailing from Surathkal, Kasargod and Natekal Manjanady were arrested by the police. The arrested are Shamshuddin, Rauf, Harshad, Shameer, Iqbal, Hussain, Nawaz and Nisar.

....
The police state that such gangs also contribute heavily to the sex trade. Take for instance a major racket at Allapuzza in Kerala. The kingpins of the sex rackets rely heavily on such gangs. These gangs are sent out to lay traps and innocent victims are blackmailed and threatened to join the flesh trade. The Allapuzza police had found that there were nearly 1700 girls who were trapped into this racket. Many of them were exploited due to their financial background and some were forced into this trade as a result of threats and blackmail. Some were kept back in Kerala to contribute to an illegal sex tourism racket while some were sold off to rich people for a sum as low as 30000. Those financially backward women were paid a one time sum of Rs 10000, investigations have revealed.

Another connected racket that was busted was at Thiruvananthapuram. This racket which also forms part of this dirty circle had the head of an institution set up with funds of the social welfare department. This racket was controlled by a nun who ran the institution and the charge levelled against her was that she forced some of the inmates of this charity home to become part of the sex trade.

The police say that the ***** syndicate which is based out of Gulf and also Dubai is the one that controls this racket. It is not directly under the control of the underworld but these groups do have their blessings and protections. The rich Arabs are the ones who form part of a major customer base.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city ... 649682.cms

NEW DELHI: Rescued from a wooden box at a brothel in GB Road on April 26, 17-year-old Neeru (name changed), who had been kidnapped from West Bengal's 24 Parganas and dumped in Delhi, has been reunited with her family. The girl had appeared for her Class X exams back home. She returned to her village determined to pursue her education. Her father, who appeared relieved to have found his daughter safe, demanded speedy justice and punishment for the guilty.

The girl's father, a daily wage earner, works as a labourer in farms. He had lodged a missing person report with the local police when his daughter had not returned from school. Neeru is his eldest child. The fact that his daughter was found at GB Road did not deter him from taking her back home. According to social workers from NGO Shakti Vahini, who were tipped-off about the girl's presence at GB Road by the father, this case is an example of how family can help in rehabilitation of a survivor from red-light area.

As she waited to board a train to Kolkata at the New Delhi Railway station on Saturday, Neeru narrated how she was befriended by an unknown boy who would give her missed calls on her mobile phone. One day, when she was going to the bank from school, the boy met her and asked her to accompany him. When she felt suspicious and tried to return, he forced her to board a train and she ended up at GB Road. There were many intermediaries in the chain, thrown in to prevent identification of the traffickers.

Tenacious Neeru managed to inform her father about her whereabouts using the phone of a customer. "When we got a tip-off from the father, we informed the police and a raid was organized on April 17. However, we did not find the girl. Later, a decoy customer found a 20-year-old girl from Midnapore district who was sitting depressed in a corner and it turned out that she, too, had been trafficked by a youth who had promised to marry her. She said the girl was hidden in a wooden box here. A second raid was organized on April 26 and both the girls and six other women were rescued from the box," said Rishikant from Shakti Vahini.

On Saturday, the 20-year-old girl from Midnapore also returned home with her father. She, too, plans to pursue her education now.

The brothel owner, Padma, had been arrested under sections of abduction, rape, illegal confinement and criminal conspiracy. Sections under POCSO, juvenile justice and immoral trafficking were also added. More arrests are likely.

In the last four years, Shakti Vahini has helped rescue 670 victims of human trafficking, including those trafficked for prostitution, forced marriage, domestic slavery, child labour, bonded labour and adoption. Around 75 victims have been rescued from GB Road.

Recent reports indicate millions are involved and affected, and India is a source, destination and transit country for child trafficking. About 7,000 sex workers cross over from Nepal into the country every year, and children from Bangladesh enter via west Bengal, lured by marriage or job offers.

In India, children from poor and rural communities, especially those with emotional, physical and learning difficulties, are particularly vulnerable to inter-country trafficking. They are often kidnapped or bought from their families to be sold to brothels and into beggary or forced labour.

But we are fighters, we don't compromise and we are ready to go to jail or even die for our cause. Why? Because we are haunted by the horror that we have witnessed – the unimaginable treatment that children are subjected to, the picture of old women being forced into prostitutions, and mothers with young babies having sex with one man while another holds her baby in front of her.