| The rescue of a 17-year-old domestic worker after months of horrific abuse in Gurugram, points to a larger malaise of child trafficking. It doesn’t make for pleasant reading, but I urge you to read on... The Big Story What does the abuse of a 17-year-old domestic worker have to do with child trafficking? Plenty, it turns out I’ll spare you the graphic details of the abuse and torture of a minor girl by a couple in Gurugram, Manish Khattar and Kamaljeet Kaur. The 17-year-old daughter of Gond tribals had been brought from Simdega, Jharkhand by a placement agency and for the past five months had been caring for the couple’s three-and-a-half year old daughter. When she was rescued on February 7, she had visible injuries on her body. The rescue began as a tip off to the NGO, Sakhi when a visitor to New Colony in old Gurugram saw the injured girl eating out of a community dustbin. That person was so appalled that they called up activist Deepika Narayan Bhardwaj who then informed Sakhi. The local police was contacted and within an hour-and-a-half the girl had been rescued and taken to the civil hospital where she is still being treated for her injuries. The girl’s mother has since arrived from Jharkhand and is with her. “I cannot tell you the state she was in,” says a clearly upset Bhardwaj. “But day before yesterday when I visited her, she at least smiled at me.” A long legal process has begun. Khattar and Kaur have been arrested on various charges including the stringent POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences), the SC/ST and Bonded Labour act. The owner of the placement agency that had put the girl in the couple’s house, Arun Kumar Turi of Jharkhand and his associate Manish Nag have been arrested for human trafficking. At least 250 minor girls had been placed by the same agency since 2018 in various homes around Delhi NCR. Acquittal rates of traffickers was as high as 89% in 2020, found the Trafficking in Persons report, 2022. Jharkhand chief minister Hemant Soren said the police will bring the girl back to the state and she will be provided treatment, education and rehabilitation. Both Manish Khattar and Kamaljeet Kaur have been sacked from their respective jobs after news of their arrest went viral on social media. A problem in plain sight The trafficking story is an old one with poverty at its core. Desperately poor families particularly from the tribal belt of Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Chhattisgarh send their children to work in cities as cheap labour in sari processing units, in brick kilns, for sex work in brothels and spas, and for domestic labour. This is done through a chain of contacts that begins from the family and ends at the placement agency, with each link in the chain receiving a pay-off, said Rishi Kant, an activist with Shakti Vahini. “Many of these children are minors who are in need of care and protection under the Juvenile Justice Act,” said Kant. “It is a matter of concern that they are brought through the organised crime of human trafficking. The exploitation of children is non-negotiable.” The 17-year-old is one of five siblings. Her father tends goats and her mother collects firewood for cooking, Kant said. When her brother fell ill, the family had no money for his treatment. The 17-year-old and her elder sister (who was, mercifully, treated well by her employers) were put to work by her uncle. The placement agency was paid Rs 30,000 from Khattar and Kaur and out of this paid a commission of Rs 10,000 to its agent, Nag. Turi, the owner of the agency, would travel to remote regions to convince family members to send their children to work--not a particularly hard sell given the poverty and lack of employment opportunities in the villages. The pandemic effect Census 2011 pegged child labour at 10 million out of a total population of 259.6 million children aged between 5-14. But during the pandemic, child labour among vulnerable communities spiked by nearly 280%, according to a Campaign Against Child Labour study of 28 districts in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry, quoted in the Hindu. This was caused by loss of livelihood, reverse migration back to the villages and the closure of schools. The Adivasi community remains one of the most deprived in India. A recent study on the livelihood status of this population in Jharkhand and Odisha, finds that Adivasis lag behind the rest of the country in not only household income but also nutritional outcomes, literacy and infrastructure like public transport. [Read the study in Ideas for India here] Who’s to blame? In 2010, the Delhi high court for the first time (Bachpan Bachao v Union of India) sought to regulate placement agencies in Delhi NCR and defined domestic work as a hazardous industry in which children under 14 could not be employed. Until then, says advocate Aparna Bhat who was appearing for an NGO, Butterflies in the case, some 123 placement agencies had been functioning in the capital region with no regulatory control. But loopholes allow them to continue running. Some have registered under the Shops and Establishment Act; others shifted to Noida and Faridabad so that the rules for Delhi don’t apply to them. Domestic labour is, on paper, governed by minimum wages, but this is rarely (if ever) implemented.  Source: Care.org It certainly seems strange that in the five months that the 17-year-old was with the couple at Gurugram, nobody seemed to have noticed her obvious injuries and distress. It took a casual visitor to spot her searching for food in a dustbin for her to be rescued “There is no support system for domestic workers,” said Shakti Vahini’s Kant. “They work for 24 hours, cook and clean for families and are not even given a dignified salary in most cases.” Rishi Kant worries that once the media move to another story, it will be back to business. And placement agencies will continue looking for human beings to fulfil the big citys’ cheap labour requirements. Know more From Darjeeling to Delhi—story of a young girl who was trafficked HAQ’s report on child trafficking in India Satyarthi Foundation on child trafficking | 
