Tier II:
India is a source, destination, and transit
country for men, women, and children subjected to forced labor and sex
trafficking. The forced labor of an estimated 20 to 65 million citizens
constitutes India’s largest trafficking problem; men, women, and
children in debt bondage—sometimes inherited from previous
generations—are forced to work in industries such as brick kilns, rice
mills, agriculture, and embroidery factories. A common characteristic of
bonded labor is the use of physical and sexual violence as coercive
means. Ninety percent of India’s trafficking problem is internal, and
those from the most disadvantaged social strata—lowest caste Dalits,
members of tribal communities, religious minorities, and women from
excluded groups—are most vulnerable. Trafficking victims in India at
times are injured or killed by their traffickers; for example, a labor
contractor in the State of Odisha chopped off the hands of two bonded
labor victims in 2013. Media reported instances of severe mistreatment
of domestic servants in New Delhi, many of whom were victims of forced
labor, including cases of rape, torture, and murder. NGOs observed that
the majority of trafficking victims are recruited by agents known to
them in their home villages with promises of work in urban or other
rural areas. Trafficking between Indian states continues to rise due to
increased mobility and growth in industries that use forced labor, such
as construction, textiles, wire manufacturing for underground cables,
biscuit factories, and floriculture. Thousands of unregulated work
placement agencies reportedly engage in sex and labor trafficking but
escape prosecution; some of these agents participate in the sexual abuse
that approximately 20 percent of domestic workers reportedly
experience. Placement agencies also provide child labor for domestic
service, meeting a demand for cheap and docile workers and creating a
group vulnerable to trafficking.
Children are subjected to forced labor as factory workers, beggars,
agricultural workers, and, in some rural areas of Northern India, as
carpet weavers. A 2013 study of India’s hand-made carpet sector revealed
2,612 cases of forced labor and 2,010 cases of bonded labor of adults
and children in nine Northern Indian states, including entire villages
subjected to debt bondage in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. Begging
ringmasters sometimes maim children as a means to earn more money. Boys
from Nepal and Bangladesh continue to be subjected to forced labor in
coal mines in the state of Meghalaya. Boys from the region of Kashmir
are forced by insurgent separatists and terrorist groups to fight
against the Indian government. Burmese Rohingya and Sri Lankan Tamil
refugees continue to be vulnerable to forced labor in India. Boys from
Bihar are subjected to forced labor in embroidery factories in Nepal.
Experts estimate that millions of women and children are victims of
sex trafficking in India. Children continue to be subjected to sex
trafficking in religious pilgrimage centers and tourist destinations.
Girls from Assam state are kidnapped for domestic servitude. Around 90
percent of the girls who were from Jharkhand and were victimized work as
domestic servants. A large number of Nepali, Afghan, and Bangladeshi
females—the majority of whom are children aged nine to 14 years old—and
women and girls from China, Russia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, the
Philippines, and Uganda are also subjected to sex trafficking in India.
Female trafficking victims are frequently exploited in Kolkata, Mumbai,
Delhi, Gujarat, and along the India-Nepal border. Newspapers contain
advertisements promising full body massages, often by Afghan women, who
are then forced to offer sexual services. Traffickers also pose as
matchmakers, arranging sham marriages within India or to Gulf states,
and then subject women and girls to sex trafficking. West Bengal
continues to be a source for trafficking victims, with girls more
frequently subjected to sex trafficking in small hotels, vehicles, huts,
and private residences than traditional red light districts. Experts
also reported increasing demand for women from smaller towns in North
and Western India for sex and labor trafficking; until recently, victims
have typically originated from Eastern India and Bangladesh.
Some Indian migrants who willingly seek work as construction workers,
domestic servants, and other low-skilled laborers in the Middle East
and, to a lesser extent, Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Bhutan, the United
States, Europe, Southern Africa, South America, the Caribbean, and
other regions, subsequently face forced labor conditions initiated by
recruitment fraud and usurious recruitment fees charged by Indian labor
brokers. Some Bangladeshi migrants are subjected to forced labor in
India through recruitment fraud and debt bondage. Trafficking
victims—primarily girls—continue to be recruited from Bangladesh and
Nepal and brought to Mumbai. An increasing number of foreign women,
mostly from Central Asia and Bangladesh, were rescued from debt bondage
within Hyderabad; labor trafficking, including bonded labor, reportedly
continues in Odisha.
The Government of India does not fully comply with the minimum
standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making
significant efforts to do so. Experts reported increased acknowledgement
of India’s trafficking problem by government officials and increased
efforts to combat it. Despite these efforts, the protection of
trafficking victims and the prosecution of their suspected exploiters
were uneven among states and municipalities. While some courts in some
states have secured serious penalties for convicted traffickers,
continued complicity of government officials enabled traffickers to
exploit additional men, women, and children. Officials facilitated
trafficking by taking bribes, warning traffickers about raids, helping
traffickers destroy evidence, handing victims back to traffickers, and
physically and sexually assaulting victims. Lack of political will and
sensitivity to victims’ trauma continued, with one senior official
stating that victims choose “that lifestyle;” another politician stated
that victims were better off exploited than they would be otherwise.
Recommendations for India:
Prosecute officials allegedly complicit in trafficking, and convict
and punish those found guilty; continue to sensitize law enforcement
officials to human trafficking issues and educate them about changes to
the law; cease the penalization of victims of human trafficking;
integrate anti-trafficking procedures into natural disaster planning and
training; establish additional Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) in
source areas; encourage AHTUs to address all forms of trafficking,
including forced labor of adults and children; hire additional female
police officers to work with trafficking victims; coordinate standard
operating procedures (SOPs) among police and child welfare departments
for the rescue, repatriation, and rehabilitation of trafficked children;
prosecute suspected traffickers and punish those found guilty with
sentences commensurate with those of other serious crimes; increase
funding for shelters, regular training of staff working with victims,
and the creation of a quality control board; through continued
coordination with stakeholders, increase prevention efforts and services
provided to victims of forced and bonded labor; increase prosecutions
of all forms of trafficking, including bonded labor, respecting due
process, and report on these law enforcement efforts; improve
protections for trafficking victims who testify against their suspected
traffickers; develop and implement SOPs to harmonize victim
identification and repatriation, and prosecution of suspected
traffickers when trafficking crimes cross state lines; provide funding
for additional states to establish fast-track courts that respect due
process and deal with all forms of human trafficking; promptly disburse
government funding for anti-trafficking shelter homes and develop
monitoring mechanisms to ensure quality of care; require state
governments to comply with the October 2012 Supreme Court judgment to
accurately report on the number of bonded labor victims; and fund more
public awareness campaigns in informal settlements, schools, and
colleges.
Prosecution
The Government of India did not provide adequate anti-trafficking law
enforcement data; observers noted a lack of progress based on low rates
of convictions, with most offenders receiving fines in lieu of
imprisonment. Section 370 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) criminalizes
government officials’ involvement in human trafficking, prescribing
sentences up to life imprisonment. It also prohibits most forms of sex
trafficking and prescribes sufficiently stringent penalties ranging from
seven years’ to life imprisonment. These penalties are commensurate
with those prescribed for other serious crimes, such as rape. Section
370 does not, however, provide that the prostitution of a child under
the age of 18 is an act of human trafficking in the absence of coercive
means, the standard of the 2000 UN TIP Protocol, though the prostitution
of minors is criminalized under other statutes. An April 2013 change in
the criminal law, Section 166A of the IPC, holds police responsible for
delays in registering a First Information Report (FIR) after a victim
makes a complaint. Punishment for inaction ranges from six months to two
years’ imprisonment. India also prohibits many forms of forced labor
through the Bonded Labor System Abolition Act (BLSA), the Child Labor
(Prohibition and Regulation) Act, the Juvenile Justice Act, and other
provisions of the IPC; however, these provisions were unevenly enforced,
and their prescribed penalties are not sufficiently stringent. India
prohibits most forms of sex trafficking under the Immoral Traffic
Prevention Act (ITPA) and various provisions of the IPC. However, the
ITPA also criminalizes other offenses, including prostitution, and is
often used to prosecute sex trafficking victims.
The Government of India did not report comprehensive law enforcement
data on human trafficking. Reported incidents of inaction by law
enforcement and prosecutors reflected inconsistent application of the
law across jurisdictions, corruption among officials, and a lack of
awareness or capacity in some parts of the country. Information publicly
released as human trafficking data by the National Crimes Record Bureau
contained aggregated data under the ITPA (which included statistics on
the government’s penalization of trafficking victims), and a limited
number of IPC provisions which only addressed sex trafficking of girls,
rather than a broader range of human trafficking crimes; in addition,
the data provided did not specify the number of investigations,
prosecutions, or convictions carried out by the government. Some of the
28 states in India reported law enforcement data on human trafficking,
but such information covers only a small portion of the country.
Observers noted the need for more specialized courts in other states.
Experts expressed concern about a lack of political will to combat
trafficking and protect victims in West Bengal, which has no AHTUs,
trafficking-specific law enforcement units that liaise with other
agencies and refer victims to shelters, no rehabilitation services for
victims, and no cases investigated or prosecuted in 2013 under the ITPA
or the new trafficking laws, despite the area being a major source for
trafficking.
Government officials’ complicity in human trafficking remained
prevalent and the Indian government made few efforts to bring them to
justice; victims were sometimes arrested or targeted for investigation
for reporting abuse. In May 2013, Hyderabad police arrested a government
official for allegedly operating a brothel. In June 2013, 17 police
officers, including two superintendents, were suspended in Kerala for
their involvement in a sex trafficking ring run through two airports;
several of the officers were arrested and their cases remained pending
at the close of the reporting period. Despite cooperating with police,
the victim who reported this case was arrested and charged with passport
fraud. In June 2013, authorities arrested two police officers for
running a brothel. In July 2013, disciplinary action was taken against
three Kerala police officers for facilitating the transport of
trafficking victims to Dubai. In August 2013, two New Delhi police
officers were arrested for running an alleged prostitution and extortion
racket. In November 2013, a Member of Parliament and his wife were
arrested for the alleged torture and murder of their domestic servant.
An Indian consular officer at the New York consulate was indicted in
December 2013 for visa fraud related to her alleged exploitation of an
Indian domestic worker. NGOs reported other cases of corrupt officials
returning rescued and escaped bonded laborers back to their exploiters;
government officials attempting to dissuade bonded labor victims from
pressing charges, stating that there would be negative repercussions
from superiors if reported; and the involvement in bonded labor of
regional politicians who used influence to block prosecutions. Police
also reportedly accepted bribes in the form of money and sexual services
in exchange for ignoring or failing to pursue trafficking charges,
sexually abused trafficking victims, tipped suspected traffickers off to
raids, released suspected traffickers after their arrests, and helped
suspected traffickers destroy evidence.
The Government of India collaborated with international
organizations, NGOs, and state governments in its efforts to train
police, judges, and lawyers on the handling of trafficking cases. The
Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) reported that every district across India
conducted training for prosecutors and judges on trafficking. The MHA
continued to offer a human trafficking certificate course through a
public university, continued a two-year project for training law
enforcement officers in four states in association with an international
organization, and supported the Bureau of Police Research and
Development Initiatives by conducting government training programs with
state police academies. State and local governments also conducted
extensive training. The government encountered difficulties in
conducting cooperative investigations with the Governments of Nepal and
Bangladesh due to multiple layers of bureaucracy and lack of SOPs.
Protection
The Government of India made some improvements in the areas of victim
care, rehabilitation, and compensation; however, the implementation of
these services was inconsistent and their quality was frequently
substandard. Experts observed that much of the focus of the government’s
victim protection activities was limited to sex trafficking victims,
with inadequate care and services provided to victims of forced and
bonded labor. Experts also reported that officials in many small towns
and villages made minimal efforts to protect trafficking victims. NGOs
cited the 2013 creation of child protection cells at major railway
stations as a significant development in victim protection, even though
they were not trafficking specific—child protection cells paired police
and NGOs to identify exploited children and refer them to protective
services. A 2009 MHA non-binding directive advises state government
officials to use SOPs to identify trafficking victims proactively and
refer them to protection services; however, there is no information that
such SOPs were used during the year, and the government did not provide
information on the number of trafficking victims it identified. Experts
noted that funding for NGOs was insufficient to meet trafficking
victims’ needs and law enforcement officers were not appropriately
trained to identify victims. NGOs relied primarily on donor
contributions to provide victims services, though some received
government funds. Both government- and NGO-run shelters faced shortages
of financial resources and trained personnel, particularly the lack of
counselors and medical staff. Disbursal of funding to NGOs that provided
services to victims was delayed and corruption reportedly drained
valuable resources that were intended for victim care. An NGO reported
very poor conditions at one government-run shelter, with no running
water and only one meal provided per day; desperate victims ran off or
returned to prostitution rather than accept such conditions. The
government referred victims it removed from exploitation to
government-funded NGO care and rehabilitation shelters throughout India;
services such as psychological counseling and medical treatment were
scarce or of poor quality in some of these facilities. The government
provided shelter to an unknown number of Indian and foreign victims;
both had access to government hospitals for emergency medical services,
although long waiting lists made it difficult to obtain surgery and
other procedures and, at times, NGOs had to pay for victims’ medical
treatment. Funding for government programs is jointly shared between the
central and state governments. Child victims were placed in private
shelters or in government aftercare shelters known as juvenile justice
homes and largely received the same government services as adults.
The government policy on foreign victims of trafficking was to
repatriate them to their country of origin at the earliest possible
time. Foreign sex trafficking victims were detained in government
aftercare homes until transfer to their country of origin was possible.
Due to a number of constraints, this process resulted in victims,
especially those from Bangladesh, spending upwards of two to four years
in these homes before being repatriated. Foreign trafficking victims are
not permitted to work in the local economy. In a previous reporting
period the MHA provided guidelines to all state governments on
procedures to deal with foreign nationals detained in cases of human
trafficking; the guidelines note that women and children who are
declared victims should not be prosecuted under the Foreigners Act. It
further advised states and union territories to refer the victims to
government-run shelters until they are repatriated and encouraged use of
video conferencing facilities for victims’ testimony. It appears that
in some states, MHA guidelines are systematically used; in others,
services remained ad hoc at best. Officials from the National
Commission for Protection of Child Rights noted a lack of SOPs among
police and child welfare departments in source states to coordinate the
rescue, repatriation, and rehabilitation of trafficked children. Victims
had the right to file civil suits against traffickers for damages.
Prosecutors may request special protections for victims during trial,
including closing proceedings to the media and public, testifying behind
screens, and the blocking of irrelevant and potentially harmful
questions. Rescued bonded laborers are entitled to “release
certificates” that entitle them to compensation, but victims in Odisha
and other states experienced delays in excess of two years in receiving
the certificates.
Some government-run shelters did not permit adult victims to leave
the premises, purportedly for security reasons, contrary to
international principles on the protection of victims. In some cases,
traffickers continued to re-recruit victims by pretending to be family
members and convincing shelter managers to release victims to them.
During investigations, police sometimes treated victims as suspected
criminals and subjected them to aggressive questioning. The Ministry of
Overseas Indian Affairs (MOIA) claimed to provide discretionary funds to
Indian embassies to help rehabilitate or repatriate Indian citizens who
are victims of trafficking or domestic violence abroad, but officials
noted very few embassies made use of the funds. There were many reports
of trafficking victims being penalized for acts committed as a result of
being trafficked: foreign victims were often detained under the
Foreigners’ Act for their undocumented status or for document fraud, and
Section 8 of the ITPA (solicitation) and Section 294 of the IPC
(obscenity in public places) were used to prosecute and convict sex
trafficking victims.
Prevention
The Government of India conducted numerous efforts to prevent human
trafficking. NGOs noted a lack of awareness about trafficking in some
informal settlements, schools, and colleges. Many government officials
continued to conflate trafficking with smuggling and denied that bonded
labor was a problem in India. There were significant improvements in
coordination among concerned government offices, including police, Labor
Ministry officials, state Women and Child Departments, and Child
Welfare Committees in combating trafficking. An export council including
the Indian Ministry of Textiles launched an initiative to help
manufacturers in the textile industry follow proper labor practices and
prevent forced labor. Despite India being a source and destination for
sex tourism, the government did not take measures to reduce the
participation of its nationals in child sex tourism. Indian military
personnel must undergo a training program on trafficking conducted by
the Indian military and certified by the UN before deploying to
peacekeeping or similar missions. The government did not report any
efforts to reduce the demand for commercial sex acts or forced labor.
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