Girl rescued from child labour is a symbol of hope

PUBLISHED IN NDTV    Reported by Tanima Biswas, Edited by Samira Shaikh | Updated: June 12, 2013 18:26 IST

 New Delhi: A 14-year-old girl from Jharkhand, who was rescued from a home in Delhi where she was kept locked-up by a couple while they were away on a vacation, is now enjoying her days in freedom. She was rescued in March last year from the flat where she spent seven months as a domestic help for a doctor couple.

The girl is in Delhi again, where she addressed a function on the occasion of the World Day Against Child Labour today. She narrated her plight as the domestic help in the couple’s apartment and her life after she was rescued.

“My mother wanted me to study. I wanted to help out the family as my father was ill,” she said. A placement agent had brought her to Delhi from Gumli in Jharkhand, she added.

Surviving on little food after the couple left her locked-up in their Dwarka apartment, she had finally mustered the courage to shout for help from the balcony, which led to her rescue. She had later said that her employers used CCTV cameras to monitor her activities, and that she was beaten, abused and her hair was chopped off by them.

Today, she lives in a residential school and is studying in the seventh standard in Jharkhand. She says she loves football and she hopes to become a teacher one day. As for her life one year back, she has this message for her former employers: “I hope they don’t ill-treat any other girl like they treated me.” The couple was arrested for the harassment along with the placement agent, Mukesh, for buying or disposing of any person as slave.Nishi Kant, a member of NGO Shakti Vahini, says the girl’s mother had to be persuaded to allow her to go to school and it only worked out because she was offered some compensation.

Child labour is illegal in India, with several laws in place which can land a person in jail for employing any child below the age of 14.  However, children are still reportedly employed in many industries and homes across the country. Some work in hazardous environment, while many are pushed into forced labour, or are sold into prostitution. This 14-year-old’s story will stand out as an inspiration to many children who reportedly return to the city to work after being rescued, showing  them that there is way out of the vicious circle of child labour.

Haryana gets Children’s Courts

THE HINDU

The Haryana Government has decided to designate all courts of Sessions Judges and Additional Sessions Judges at each district, excluding Additional Sessions Judges (ad hoc) and Fast Track Courts, as Children’s Courts.

This move is aimed at expediting the trial of offences against children and violations of child rights under the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005.

“Under Section 28 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, 2012, special courts under the relevant section of the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005, shall also be special courts under it to try offences. The Act ensures a child-friendly judicial process. It encourages such children as having been victims of sexual abuse, to bring the offender to book and seek redressal for their suffering as well as to obtain assistance in overcoming their trauma. It makes such agencies of the State as the police, the judiciary and the child protection machinery, collaborators in securing justice to a sexually abused child,” said Sumita Misra, the director general of the Women and Child Development Department.

Saying that it was a “welcome step” and would “go a long way in ensuring justice to the children in time”, Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini, a non-government organisation, cautioned that there is a need to sensitise the judiciary towards child-related issues to bring about a real change in the situation.

“It has been often seen that the offenders in children-related cases such as child labour are easily granted bail despite there being instances of violence against the victim. Also, the police on some occasions invoke lenient sections in such cases making it easy for the offenders to go scot-free. It is the job of the judiciary to ensure that relevant sections are invoked as per the extent of the crime committed to ensure complete justice,” argued Mr. Kant.

Tormented Dwarka maid returns with story, smiling

TIMES OF INDIA

New Delhi: Abused and tortured by a doctor couple, who employed her in an upscale Dwarka society, a 13-year-old girl’s traumatic story of confinement and human rights violation had last April made the authorities sit up and take note of the growing violence against minor domestic helps. A year later, the child has emerged as an icon of courage for other girls in her home state of Jharkhand. Very good in her studies and a class monitor, she stood third in her Class VI final exams. She is now a smiling teenager, dreaming of becoming a teacher.

She will be the key speaker at a function being organized by National Commission for Protection of Child Rights on the occasion of World Day Against Child Labour at Vigyan Bhawan on Wednesday. The terrified girl, who was rescued from the Dwarka house on March 29, 2012, when her employers were vacationing in Thailand, is now a confident survivor. As she walked out of Indira Gandhi International Airport on Tuesday evening, TOI spoke to her over the phone.

Looking forward to telling the audience at Vigyan Bhawan her story, that is listed as a testimony in the NCPCR invitation, the 14-year-old said, “I must tell everyone why I came to Delhi to work. It is important for them to know the circumstances that brought me here.” Her father is mentally unstable and her mother’s irregular wages were not enough to feed a family of six. “I have a brother and two sisters. All of them are younger to me,” she said. In short, it was poverty which drove her family to send her to Delhi for work.

Memories of her stay at Delhi make her grim. “Bahut bure log the woh,” (they were very bad people) she says softly, in almost a whimper. Not wanting to discuss her pain, she says that once she was sent back by the government to Jharkhand, her life had a new meaning.

With NCPCR’s intervention, she was admitted to Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya, a residential school. Enrolled in Class VI, she is now monitor of her class. Good at studies, she loves science the most and is working on her English. She says proudly how she stood third in her class and is looking forward to doing better this year.

On child labour, she is clear. “Hum school mein sab ladkiyon se kehtey hain Dilli mat jana kaam karne. (I tell all my schoolmates not to go to Delhi for work).

The girl’s tormentors had been arrested on April 4, five days after they returned to Delhi. They were later released on bail. The child had been forced to do all household chores but made to virtually starve and given no salary. The CWC had found out that she had been forced out of school by her uncle who had passed her on to a trafficker. Eventually, a placement agency sent her to the Dwarka family.

• Doctor couple apply for bail, extend vacation fearing arrest (shaktivahini.wordpress.com)
• Tired of being abused, child helps run away (traffickingnews.wordpress.com)
• Tired of being abused, child helps run away (shaktivahini.wordpress.com)
• Doctor couple lock 13-yr-old help in house, fly to Bangkok (shaktivahini.wordpress.com)
• Minor Help Locked Up As Couple Holidays (shaktivahini.wordpress.com)
• We cannot allow our children to work (traffickingnews.wordpress.com)
• Maid locked in hellhole flat with salt, atta (shaktivahini.wordpress.com)
• Delhi doctor couple denied bail in maid abuse case (shaktivahini.wordpress.com)
• Children Rescued From Sex Abuse in a Joint Raid by Shakti Vahini and National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (shaktivahini.wordpress.com)
• NGO shield for trafficker (shaktivahini.wordpress.com)

Minor rescued, Gurgaon agency under scanner

TIMES OF INDIA

GURGAON/FARIDABAD: A minor girl, employed as domestic help in a household at Sector 15 in Faridabad, was rescued on Tuesday. The girl was allegedly tortured and kept in confinement by her employer.

The rescue operation was conducted on a tip-off from Childline to Shakti Vahini, an NGO and the Faridabad police, along with a member from the Child Welfare Committee (CWC) on Tuesday. A daily diary report has been filed in the case.

During counseling, it was revealed that the girl was working as domestic help for the last five to six years. The victim said she belongs to the Jalpaiguri district of West Bengal, and has been working with the present employer for the past four years. She said she was brought to Delhi a neighbourhood woman identified as Kavita, who handed her over to Triveni Placement Agency in Gurgaon.

Since the placement agency that employed the girl is based in Gurgaon, Savitri Dhaka, chairperson, Haryana State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (HSCPCR), has asked the Gurgaon deputy commissioner to look into the matter.

Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini said the minor stated that the employer as well as his wife and their children used to beat her up. She was often discriminated against by the employer’s family. She was never allowed to sit on the sofa and sleep on the bed during these four years. She was also not paid for her work. The girl said she was kept locked inside the house when her employer’s family would go out.

“There is a need to formulate a national law on the placement agencies. A lot of them are mushrooming in Gurgaon without any regulatory check on them. Minors are trafficked to Gurgaon and other places through them,” Kant said.

Presently, the girl has been accommodated in a shelter home as per the direction of the CWC.

Shakti Vahini has coordinated with the superintendent of police, Jalpaiguri district, West Bengal, who has traced the girl’s family. A request has also been sent to the Faridabad DCP and SCPCR and the Gurgaon commissioner of police for a large-scale investigation on the placement agencies.

 

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SHAKTI VAHINI TO REACH 4000 BORDER VILLAGES IN WEST BENGAL FOR CAMPAIGN AGAINST HUMAN TRAFFICKING

SHAKTI VAHINI

REACHING OUT TO THE COMMUNITY in WEST BENGAL ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING. IN THE NEXT FOUR MONTHS 5 TEAMS OF SHAKTI VAHINI WILL REACH OUT TO 4000 BORDER VILLAGES ACROSS WEST BENGAL

‘Aunts’ stake claim to trafficked girl

TIMES OF INDIA

NEW DELHI: One of the two young women rescued from Delhi’s hellhole—the infamous GB Road on Friday—could never had never imagined her traffickers going such lengths to try and push her back into flesh trade. Two women, who appeared before the local court where she was produced on Saturday, claimed they were her aunts but could provide no document to prove it. They even refused to state how her parents lost their lives, a claim they made before the court. Cops believe the two are part of the trafficking gang but managed to slip away from the court premises before they could be detained. Police, though, said there was no evidence against the two women to take any action against them.

Shakti Vahini, the NGO that helped rescue her, claimed she is a minor. However, the victim has told Kamla Market police that she is 19 years old and hence a major. This is the reason she was initially not produced before a juvenile justice board. Police claim she’s from Nepal. The local court has now given a detailed order in the case. “Two women, Sarita and Bakula, have appeared and submitted they are the mausi and bua of the girl, respectively. However, they could not provide the names of her parents or how their deaths occurred though they claimed they had passed away. It is doubtful if the women are related to her at all,” metropolitan magistrate Sachin Sangwan said.

The order goes on to state that the cops must get the ossification test of the girl done as there is no document to show that she is a minor.

The other victim, an 18-year-old student from South 24-Parganas, is not happy that Delhi Police has decided to leave it to police in West Bengal to register a case and conduct investigations even after she named five persons. “I request the chairperson to take immediate action against the traffickers and brothel keepers so that many like me can be saved,” she wrote to National Commission for Women.

Trafficked, confined and raped in the heart of Delhi

PUBLISHED IN THE HINDU

As Delhi debated and discussed the issue of women’s rights and safety during the past three months, barely four kilometres from Parliament, the seat of Indian democracy, a 19-year-old girl was kept confined within a small cavity in the walls of a brothel at G.B. Road. During this period she was continuously raped – usually by over a dozen men from morning to night.

But even after she was rescued on Thursday, the Delhi Police did not deem it fit to register a gang-rape case. Rather, it even allowed her rapists, abductors and brothel owners to intimidate her during her court presence. And while her father has come from South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal to take his youngest daughter back, she was on Friday sent to Nari Niketan instead.

The tragic tale began this February when the girl was preparing for her Class X Board exams.

Based on the limited conversation that he had with his sister post her rescue, the girl’s brother, who accompanied his father to Delhi, told The Hindu that one evening when she came out of her village house in West Bengal, a drug-laced cloth was pressed against her face which made her unconscious.

“When she came back to her senses, she found herself at the Howrah railway station accompanied by the abductor and few others who told her that they were waiting for a train to Delhi. As she protested, they made her consume some more sedatives and she then regained consciousness only on reaching Delhi,” said Imran (name changed), whose earlier visit to Kotla Mubarakpur and other colonies of Delhi in search of his youngest sister was reported by The Hindu.

Back then, the girl’s brother had contacted NGO Shakti Vahini seeking help.

The same NGO along with the police conducted a raid at the brothel on May 9 and rescued the girl who was found confined in a “cave-like structure” cut into one of the walls.

But the girl’s trauma did not end there. When she was produced before a Duty Magistrate on Friday, the brothel owners were also present in the court room in strength and during the course of hearing, they even showed the gumption to coerce and threaten the girl sitting in the court room to bring her back into the business.

The girl’s father, a man with a white beard, was ready with all the related papers to take his daughter in his custody, but the court said he could get his daughter back only from a regular court.

The girl was then sent to Nari Niketan on technical grounds.

‘Victim of an organised racket’

According to Rishi Kant of NGO Shakti Vahini that helped in the girl’s rescue, she was a victim of an organised racket. The gang members abduct teenaged girls and push them into the flesh trade.

The racket involving Delhi’s brothel owners and traffickers in the hinterland functions so professionally that girls are kidnapped and forced into the trade without being detected because the police response is lukewarm to this crime against women.

An example of this apathy is the three-month delay that was witnessed in registering the missing report by the West Bengal Police into the disappearance of the girl.

The State police only fulfilled this mandatory formality after she was rescued here on May 9.

Dad’s 3-month search for lost daughter ends in city brothel

AMBIKA PANDIT IN THE TIMES OF INDIA

NEW DELHI: In the chaos of busy Swami Shradhanand Marg, commonly referred to as GB Road and known as the capital’s largest red light area, a father wept inconsolably as he hugged his 18-year-old daughter rescued from a hidden chamber in the wall inside a filthy brothel on Thursday.

A Class X student aspiring to be a nurse, the girl was kidnapped from outside her house in a village in the South 24-Parganas district of West Bengal in February this year. She was trafficked to Delhi but police in her home district only registered an FIR in the case on Friday even though the matter was reported by the family on February 15. It was dumped as a mere diary entry of a “missing complaint”.

Even in Delhi all of Friday was spent in deciding whether an FIR should be registered here or not. Finally Delhi Police decided to leave it to the police in West Bengal to register a case and carry out investigations.

This case brings to the fore the plight of the families of missing children. The victim’s father, who is a daily-wage labourer, reveals that the girl was studying for her Class X exam in March. A committed student, the victim stepped out of the house for a short break from her studies and never returned. Her parents and two elder brothers searched in vain and their complaint to the local police failed to make an impact as the records show no effort was made to register a case by police.

Not one to give up hope, the victim’s father contacted NGO Shakti Vahini which had rehabilitated another girl who was trafficked from their village. “I thought maybe someone has taken away my daughter to Delhi like the other girl,” the father told TOI. Some time during the next three months, the father said, an unknown person contacted him to inform she had been kidnapped and kept in a brothel at G B Road. The family was told she was desperate to return home.

The victim’s family joined forces with activists from NGO Shakti Vahini to launch a rescue operation through Delhi Police. The victim’s brother who makes a living by doing embroidery revealed how they went up the narrow stairs to the dingy brothel and finally pulled her out from a hidden chamber. Another girl from Nepal was rescued from a similar chamber in the wall. The victim’s brothers now want to take her home to her mother who has been sick since her disappeared. But the family reunion will have to wait till early next week as the trial court sent her to Nari Niketan for care till final orders are issued for her rehabilitation.

Girl sold, raped and rescued

DEVESH PANDEY IN THE HINDU

The long journey of Debyani (name changed) from her village in the Burdwan district of West Bengal to Delhi and then to Bharatpur in Rajasthan is a saga of a minor girl who was kidnapped by traffickers and sold off for forced marriage and then subjected to continuous physical and sexual abuse for the past four years. The girl, who has now been rescued, is the mother of two children.

On the pretext of getting her employed as a domestic help, a fellow villager had one day taken Debyani along to a place where she was handed over to a trafficker four years ago. It was two years after she went missing that the local police registered a specific case on the basis of a complaint lodged by her father who raised suspicion about the complicity of a girl named Sulekha.Police investigations revealed that she was handed over to a person named Kalu Sheikh, who sold her off for a paltry sum. She was then forcibly married to a resident of Deeg village of Bharatpur in Rajasthan. “About a year ago, the investigating officer tracked her down and rescued her. He also arrested Kalu Sheikh. The girl had by then become the mother of two children. Surprisingly, she was escorted back to West Bengal by some villagers. In her judicial statement, she claimed that she had fled on her own as her parents wanted to push her into prostitution. As a result, the accused was released on bail and the girl was taken back to Rajasthan,” said a West Bengal police officer.

It was after the victim’s family moved habeas-corpus petition in the High Court that an Anti-Human Trafficking Unit team led by Inspector Sarbari Bhattacharya was directed to probe the matter. The officer discovered that the case had been closed. She got it reopened and in coordination with non-government organisation Shakti Vahini reached Bharatpur.

“The moment the girl saw the Bengali-speaking woman officer, she clung onto her pleading to take her back home. She even forgot to take her elder son along and wanted to leave immediately. She kept crying, alleging that she was sold off and subjected to torture,” said Rishi Kant, who was part of the rescue team.The police officer made enquiries and found that a woman named Rakhi from West Bengal, who had settled down there 20 years ago, lived in the neighbourhood. “During questioning, she disclosed that she had bought the victim from her relative Kalu Sheikh. Her brother had tortured the victim so much that she still dreads him.”

Realising that it was purely a case of human trafficking, the officer decided to rescue the girl along with her two children and arrested Rakhi. “However, it will be difficult for us to now track down Kalu Sheikh and Sulekha…there are umpteen number of cases were girls and women from West Bengal are being trafficked to places like Delhi and being pushed into prostitution, forced labour and marriage. But we come across officers who do not realise the gravity of the problem and treat the victims as just ‘poor Bengalis’,” said a West Bengal Police officer.

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Trafficking of tribal girls: Sick gardens trigger exodus

SUMATI YENGKHOM IN THE TIMES OF INDIA

Several Delhi-based placement agencies, that claim to provide work to these trafficked girls, are being run illegally and without any registration. These agencies work in nexus with the ‘agents’ who are local tea garden workers and known to the victims.

The ignorant poor parents, who cannot feed their children, are ready to lap up the opportunity of sending the children to Delhi for work. in order to get rid of the their responsibility and also in the hope of getting a regular monthly income.

Once the victims reach Delhi, they stay in touch with the families for a few days. some of them is in contact with the family. But soon they are barred from communicating with their parents and also, money stops reaching their families. Only a handful of them get work as domestic help, while the rest are either sold in brothels or for marriage.

About four months ago, a placement firm by the name Sai Placement Agency lured four girls from the Mateli police station area. Shakti Vahini members rescued the girls with the help of West Bengal Police. The agency was found to be fake and the trafficker Neelima Sharma was arrested after an FIR (number 223/12 under section 363/366/374 dated 21/11.2012) was lodged with the Mateli police.

Though the trend of migration by tribal girls started way back in 2000, the exodus has taken a massive proportion in last five to six years after several tea gardens were declared sick. Many of these tea estates do not even have primary schools and heathcare facilities. There is hardly any penetration by organizations that work for the welfare of the tribals.

Jalpaiguri police are aware of the magnitude of the problem and admitted that there is need to do much more to prevent trafficking. Police’s anti-trafficking activities like awareness programmes are restricted to educational institutions, a place that is out of bounds to the girls here.

“Poverty is the main issue. Unless it is addressed, the girls here will remain vulnerable. Though we cannot do much on that front, we are working on other preventive measures. Few days back we arrested two agents in Banarhat for trying to lure some girls. We need to penetrate deeper into the tea gardens. Officers-in-charge of all police stations have been asked to maintain records of girls who are going away for work, the persons taking them away, contacts of employers in collaboration with the local panchayats,” said Jalpaiguri SP Amit P Javalgi.

The schemes for the poor, like the BPL card and old age pension, are distant dreams. Most are not even aware of the existence of such schemes. There is no effort worth mentioning on part of local politicians for uplift the economic status of this tribal population. A major portion of the funds under schemes like NREGA are being pocketed by local panchayats.

“Recently we found misappropriation of NREGA funds by the local panchayat. Many garden workers were made to sign that they were paid for 100 days work, whereas these illiterate workers were paid only for seven days. We were even threatened by some panchayat members for unearthing this information and educating workers on their rights and dues,” said Omega Minj, a field worker.

Unfortunately NGOs active in anti-trafficking in many pockets of North Bengal seem to have left out these tea gardens of Jalpaiguri.

“We have been working in various parts of North Bengal but we need better penetration in the tea gardens. We will work out with the district administration, police and other stake holders to start off,” said Rishi Kant of Shakti Vahini, an orgnisation that has successfully worked with administration and police in Malda.

Going all guns out on the traffickers by the police could only serve a temporary purpose. Till the concerned departments salvage the tea garden community out of poverty and hunger, young women and children will continue to be smuggled unabated from the cursed tea gardens.