The Union Government has expressed concern over States not invoking relevant provisions of the law to register cases of human trafficking, which was resulting in ineffective prosecution or conviction.
In a note to the Director-Generals of Police of all States, the Ministry of Home Affairs said the Centre had recognised human trafficking, a highly organised offence often involving inter-State gangs, as a grave crime. Though certain amendments were made to the Indian Penal Code and new laws enacted from time to time to curb the menace of human trafficking, it had been noted that the authorities in the States/Union Territories sometimes lacked awareness and failed to register cases under the relevant provisions of law.
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Motivating and updating the knowledge base of the officers dealing with human trafficking was essential, for which States had to make special efforts and provide them adequate training and resource material etc. on a regular basis. In case the States required any specific training resources, the same could be organised by the Bureau and Police Research Development.
An institutional mechanism to counter human trafficking in a focussed and effective manner at the level of State/UT Governments was devised and shared by MHA in December 2020. The States/UTs were asked to establish Anti Human Trafficking Bureau headed by an ADGP rank officer. The MHA also issued an advisory to States to evolve appropriate coordination mechanisms among various departments in their respective administration. Many States, including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Nagaland etc, had failed to provide inputs to issues flagged by the Union Home Ministry.
Cri-MAC concerns
The MHA said many States had not effectively put to use the Crime Multi Agency Centre (Cri-MAC), a national-level communication platform launched in March 2020. The IT platform facilitated the dissemination of information about significant crimes, including human trafficking across the country on real-time basis and enabled inter-State coordination. This could in turn help in locating and identifying the trafficked victims and also in prevention, detection and investigation of crimes.
“Use of Cri-MAC application for inter-State coordination amongst law enforcement agencies of all States and UTs needs to be encouraged. Those States and UTs, who are not using Cri-MAC regularly are encouraged to make use of this IT intervention to coordinate action amongst states in sharing inputs and alerts on trafficking incidents,” the MHA said.
Data shared by the MHA on the utilisation of Cri-MAC by states revealed that Tamil Nadu which had 1,551 police stations, second highest after Uttar Pradesh (1,718 police stations), had made only 1,596 logins and given 31 alerts since the facility was launched. However, States like Haryana and Delhi which had only 380 and 224 police stations had flagged 8,237 and 10,931 alerts on grave crimes on the national platform.
Rise in cases
Going by the latest data revealed by National Crime Records Bureau, a total of 2,189 cases of Human Trafficking were registered in 2021 as compared to 1,714 cases in the 2020, showing an increase of 27.7% in the country.
A total of 6,533 victims were reported to be trafficked, including 2,877 children and 3,656 adults. Apart from this, 6,213 victims were rescued from the clutches of traffickers. A total of 5,755 persons were arrested in 2,189 cases of trafficking, the NCRB said.
