Hundreds of girls are trafficked from various districts of the State to big cities like Delhi, Gurugram, Faridabad and Mumbai every month. Being identifying it as a huge menace, the Jharkhand police started a crackdown against human trafficking and has managed to arrest as many as 743 traffickers in six years.
The latest data released by CID Jharkhand shows that a total of 743 traffickers have been arrested between 2013 to 2018 of which 473 were men and 270 women. A total of 855 cases of human trafficking were registered during this period at various police stations across the State.
CID ADG Ajay Kumar Singh said that the Jharkhand police are taking a numerous steps to combat trafficking. “The complaints are being immediately considered at the local police station level. The police are also collaborating with NGOs for sensitization which has led to a number of arrests of traffickers and also, rescue of a huge number of trafficking survivors,” he said.
A huge crackdown against wanted traffickers was started by the Jharkhand police in 2013 and the arrest of Baba Bamdev and trafficking kingpin Pannalal Mahato, who has allegedly trafficked over 10,000 girls from Jharkhand alone, in 2014 was a big achievement. The most recent big arrests were that of another wanted trafficker duo, Prabha Muni and Rohit Muni, in September and November 2018, respectively, by Simdega police.
Of the total arrests made, the highest number of traffickers, 105, was arrested by the Simdega Police, followed by 92 arrests by Gumla Police and 87 by Latehar police.
Sharing their strategy, Simdega SP Sanjeev Kumar said, “As the cases of trafficking are really high in district, we have a special team working only on this aspect. Our team does not just work inside the State but also in the destination States from where a number of arrests are made.”
Kumar pointed out that the coordination of Simdega police with the police of destination States has helped them in nabbing the traffickers. Talking about the information gathering strategies he said, “We are working with Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi’s NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan to train the chowkidars and Anganwadi Sevikas in information collection. They interact with the villagers to know whether there are children missing and if yes then who was responsible behind taking them away.”
Member of child welfare committee, Khunti and social activist, Baidnath Kumar who has been working against human trafficking for a long time and supported the rescue of hundreds of girls of the State said that the huge number of arrests has created fear among traffickers.
“With the high number of arrests, the traffickers have definitely gone on a back foot and the cases of trafficking have reduced but more is still needed to be done,” he said. The CID data also shows that 1422 persons were rescued since 2013 to 2018, of which 774 were male and 646 were female.