Odisha lived last year (2016) with the dubious tag of a major women and children ‘outsourcing’ State in the country as the State police has registered at least three women trafficking cases in every five days, and the double whammy is police have also recorded at least two cases of child trafficking in every five days.
According to the data available with the State Crime Branch, collected from the Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) and accessed by The Pioneer, the year 2016 has seen a whopping around 84 trafficking cases registered where as many as around 226 women and around 206 children were allegedly trafficked from the State.
However, the big relief for the State Home Department headed by none other than Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is there has been a fall in the trafficking cases by around 90 per cent to a mere 84 per cent in 2016 as the total trafficking cases registered in 2014 had been a whopping 765. Even, the rescue rate has witnessed a vast improvement since 2014, but still a high of over 255 trafficked women are yet to be rescued, reveal the accessed data.
Significantly, the number of trafficked children too has dropped by nearly three-fourths during the period of 2014-2016. But a high of over 172 trafficked children during the period 2014-16 are yet to be rescued by police. And nearly 65 per cent of trafficked children were girls in the age-group of 12-16 years.
Moreover, a caste-wise analysis reveals that most ‘trafficked’ cases come from most backward castes, scheduled castes and tribal households. And such ‘trafficked’ reports were filed mostly from the region where unemployment is of huge proportions. Traffickers induce poor families in the name of job; and when the parents lost all contact with their daughters, they rush to police stations to file complaints, observed a top police official in Crime Branch. The police sources added that AHTU investigation reveals that at times in districts like Sundargarh, Bargarh, Nayagarh, etc., the Jatra troupes emerge as trafficking conduits to States like UP and Bihar.
“Woman trafficking has emerged as a very lucrative business where the profit is high and, unlike smuggling, the risk is low. local networks here therefore are growing by leaps and bounds,” the official explained, adding that what apparently has come to the fore is the web of traffickers’ network here are in control of local goons who at times, having nexus with local politicians and, sadly, with local SHOs (station house officers), unabashedly continue the trade.
The modus operandi observed is that as migrant workers from Odisha are working in trafficking-destination States like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Telangana, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, this is proving a force multiplier in women trafficking cases here, the official observed and added that traffickers there not only elicit information about prospective targets but also spread their tentacles to the local network here through them.