Category Archives: SAARC TRAFFICKING

May1

Ministry of Home Affairs Issues Advisory on preventing and combating human trafficking in India – dealing with foreign nationals

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Ministry of Home Affairs Issues Advisory on preventing and combating human trafficking in India – dealing with foreign nationals

MOST IMMEDIATE
No. 14051/14/2011-F.VI
Government of India
Ministry of Home Affairs
(Foreigners Division)
Dated 1st May, 2012

OFFICE MEMORANDUM

Sub:  Advisory on preventing and combating human trafficking in India – dealing with foreign nationals.

The undersigned is directed to refer to this Ministry’s Office Memorandum No. 15011/6/2009-ATC (Advisory) dated 09.09.2009 on the above mentioned subject (copy enclosed). It has come to the notice of this Ministry that foreign nationals are associated in some instances of human trafficking among women and children.

2. Further to the detailed procedure outlined in the above mentioned Office Memorandum, it has been decided with the approval of the competent authority that in cases of foreign nationals who are apprehended in connection with human trafficking, the State Governments / UT Administrations may follow the following procedure : -

 (i) Immediately after a foreign national is apprehended on charges of human trafficking, a detailed interrogation/investigation should be carried out to ascertain whether the person concerned is a victim or a trafficker.

(ii) The victims and the persons actually involved in human trafficking should be treated differently by the police authorities. This is in line with the SAARC Convention which advocates a victim-centric approach.

(iii)  Missions/Posts in India may be informed of the arrest/detention of the foreign national by the concerned state or other authorities through CPV division in the Ministry of External Affairs(MEA) or the concerned territorial Division in MEA.

 (iv)  It is seen that in general, the foreign victims of human trafficking are found without valid passport or visa. If, after investigation, the woman or child is found to be a victim, she should not be prosecuted under the Foreigners Act. If the investigation reveals that she did not come to India or did not indulge in crime out of  her own free will, the State Government / UT Administration may not file a charge sheet against the victim.  If the chargesheet has already been filed under the Foreigners Act and other relevant laws of the land, steps may be taken to withdraw the case from prosecution so far as the victim is concerned.  Immediate action may be taken to furnish the details of such victims to the Ministry of External Affairs (Consular Division), Patiala House, New Delhi so as to ensure that the person concerned is repatriated to the country of her origin through diplomatic channels.

(v)     During the interim period, pending repatriation, the victim may be taken care of in an appropriate children’s home, or “Ujjawala” home or appropriate shelter home either of the State Government concerned or of any NGO aided by the Government of India / State Government.

(vi)    If the investigation reveals that the person is actually a trafficker, he/she may be charge-sheeted under the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act and the Foreigners Act and due process of law should be followed in such cases.

 (vii)    In order to ensure better conviction rates of perpetrators of the crime of trafficking, prosecution should be based on documentary, forensic and material evidence.  State Governments are advised to encourage the law enforcement agencies to investigate the cases in a manner that they are able to build fool proof cases against the traffickers, so that convictions can be guaranteed.  Use of fast-track courts and video conferencing to the extent possible also need to be ensured.  Please refer to para 7 of the enclosed Advisory dated 9.9.2009.

3.      All other instructions contained in this Ministry’s Advisory dated 09.09.2009 including reporting to the Anti Human Trafficking Nodal Cell in MHA will be applicable in the case of foreign nationals associated with human trafficking, whether they are women or children(children means both boys and girls upto 18 years of age).

4.      You are requested to issue suitable directions to all concerned under intimation to this Ministry.

5.      The receipt of this Office Memorandum may kindly be acknowledged.

(G.V.V. Sarma)
Joint Secretary to the Govt. of India

To
The Chief Secretaries/Principal Secretaries/ Secretary (Home) of all State Governments and Union Territory Administrations.
Copy for information and necessary action to:-
(i)  The DGs / IGs (In-charge of Prisons) /- All State Governments/ UTs
(ii)  Sri Sandeep Goel, Joint Commissioner(Crime), 3rd Floor, Police Station Kamla Market, Delhi.
(iii)  Ministry of Women and Child Development(Smt. Aditi Ray, Senior Economic Advisor), Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi.
(iv)  Secretary, Ministry of Labour, Shram Shakti Bhavan, New Delhi
(v)   Secretary, Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment, Shastri Bhavan, New Delhi.
(vi)  Secretary, Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs, Akbar Bhavan, New Delhi.
(vii)  Ministry of External Affairs:
(a) Addl. Secretary(PV)     (b) JS(Consular)          (c)  JS(BSM)
(viii) Chairperson, National Commission for Women, 4, Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Marg, New Delhi.
(ix)  Chairperson, National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, 5th Floor, Chandralok Building, Janpath, New Delhi.
(x)  Chairperson, National Human Rights Commission, Copernicus Marg, New Delhi.
(xi)  Director General, NCRB, R.K.Puram, New Delhi.
(xii)  Director General, BPR&D, New Delhi.
(xiii) Director General, Border Security Force, New Delhi.
(xiv)  Director, CBI, New Delhi..
(xv)   AS(CS) / JS(CS) / JS(UT) / JS(NE) / JS(K), MHA, North Block, New Delhi.

(G.V.V. Sarma)
Joint Secretary to the Govt. of India

Apr18

SC clarifies scope of case on Sex Workers limited to ‘rehabilitation’

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SC clarifies scope of case on Sex Workers limited to ‘rehabilitation’

Making it clear that the current attempt of the Supreme Court looking into the various questions involving sex workers and their rehabilitation does not include ‘institutionalizing or regularizing’ the profession, a division bench comprising of Justice Altamas Kabir and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra today said that there should not be any apprehension that the Apex Court was trying to ‘legalize’ the trade.

“We are not into institutionalizing or regularizing the profession… There should not be any apprehension that we are trying to legalize the trade,” the bench said clarifying the scope of the current effort in which the court has sought the involvement of various Ministries, NGOs, legal service associations, and others who would collectively develop a ‘composite plan’ to protect the rights of the sex workers.

The bench today directed to hold a meeting of all parties on May 6 to discuss the problems and issues of the Sixth Interim Report, which has been filed by the Committee appointed by the court, for looking into the various facets involving sex workers and their rehabilitation. The bench asked for identification of problems and working out solutions to the issues.

The apex court constituted panel is headed by senior counsel Pradip Ghosh and includes senior counsel Jayant Bhushan, Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, Usha Multipurpose Cooperative Society and Saima Hasan, founder of Roshni as its members. The court’s order came after it took suo motu cognizance of the problems faced by sex workers while dealing with a sex workers’ murder case.

SC clarifies scope of case on Sex Workers limited to ‘rehabilitation’

Mar1

Sex racket busted in Faridabad

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Sex racket busted in Faridabad

Chandigarh: Haryana Police claimed to have unearthed a sex racket in Faridabad with the arrest of five women and two men. Police had got information that a prostitution racket was being run from the ground floor of a house in sector-3, Faridabad. It was revealed that a lady namely Sonu, who lived in the house on rent, had been allegedly lending the house for prostitution purposes.

On the basis of specific information, a team was constituted, headed by Inspector, Women’s Cell, Ballabhgarh Asha Rani who raided the house and made the arrests.

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Mar1

For Some Women, the Misery of Mumbai’s Dance Bars Looks Like a Big Step Up

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For Some Women, the Misery of Mumbai’s Dance Bars Looks Like a Big Step Up
‘Beautiful Thing’ by Sonia Faleiro – By -   Published: February 29, 2012  NEW YORK TIMES

—

Leela, the young exotic dancer at the center of “Beautiful Thing,” is a genius of vulgarity. In this intimate and valuable book of literary reportage by Sonia Faleiro nearly every word out of Leela’s mouth is spit like a cartoon hornet. Few of these sentences, alas, are publishable here.

Nineteen when Ms. Faleiro met her, Leela was the highest paid bar dancer in a seedy Mumbai club called Night Lovers. She wore an “imported-padded” bra and had butterscotch streaks in her long hair; she sneered at most of the men who paid to watch her. When they’d toss small denomination rupee notes, she’d mock them: “Is this all you think I’m worth? Why shouldn’t I commit suicide? Why shouldn’t I stick my head into an oven?”

Leela’s way with a dirty phrase seems to infect Ms. Faleiro, a gifted young Indian-born writer who is previously the author of a novel called “The Girl” (2006). Her language, like dots of colored light pinging from a smudgy mirrored ball, casts an intoxicating if unsettling glow.

About one aggressive man at Night Lovers, the author observes: “Leela’s customer stank of vodka-chicken-onion-chili-lemon and clearly he was no hi-fi-super-badiya-tiptop type. He had no upbringing.” Plenty of Ms. Faleiro’s best sentences are unpublishable too.

“Beautiful Thing” is a book about Mumbai’s notorious sex industry, and the news it brings about young women’s lives will break your heart several times over. Most are from small villages. Most were raped repeatedly when young, often by relatives. Many were sold to other men.

Leela ran away to Mumbai when she was 13, after her father tried to film her nude and in suggestive poses, hoping she could be a porn actress. When she protested, he had her arrested, and she was raped by policemen. She fled from the general horror inflicted on India’s poor young women, in search of a better life.

Dancing at Night Lovers was, socially and financially, a step up for her. Bar dancers ranked above other sex workers, Ms. Faleiro explains, “because selling sex wasn’t a bar dancer’s primary occupation and because when she did sell sex she did so quietly and most often under her own covers.”

What Leela wants, Leela rarely gets. She dreams of a Bollywood career, and of a good marriage. She’s forced instead to live by her taut body and her even-more-taut wits. “She squeezed the men in her life like they were lemons,” Ms. Faleiro writes, “and once she was through, she discarded them like rinds.”

Leela is aware of the limited but genuine power she wields. “They think I dance for them,” she declares of her customers. “But really, they dance for me.”

Ms. Faleiro’s book has a resonance that belies its compact size. She focuses on only a few characters: Leela, some of her dancer friends and Shetty, the wily owner of Night Lovers. If “Beautiful Thing” were to be made into a film, Shetty would be played by whomever is the current Bollywood equivalent of Paul Giamatti.

With a few strokes Ms. Faleiro conjures a world, and it is mostly a world of hurt and confusion. She spent five years researching and writing this book, and its lessons are presented frankly. “Poverty eventually made criminals of everyone,” she writes of the women and the shady men in their milieu. Noting Mumbai’s unforgiving nature, she says, “Naïveté was fair prey and beauty unguarded deserved what it got.”

In another writer’s hands Leela’s story might have become an op-ed tract. But Ms. Faleiro’s book is not a dirge. For one thing Leela is simply too quirky and alive on the page. She might be wealthy from the tips she makes, but the author catches her in unguarded moments.

“She loved not paying for her pleasures,” Ms. Faleiro writes. “After the dance bar closed for the night, Leela would waltz from table to table helping herself to half-smoked cigarettes. She would press her cherry-red lips to abandoned beer bottles.”

There’s a feminist spark in Ms. Faleiro’s portrayal of these women. One who was raped repeatedly before the age of 10 says to her, “I decided that if this was going to keep happening to me, then at least I should profit from it, I should eat from it.”

Leela urges the author not to pity her. “When you look at my life, don’t look at it beside yours,” she implores. “Look at it beside the life of my mother and her mother and my sisters-in-law who have to take permission to walk down the road.”

This story can’t end well, and of course it does not. The dance club closes; Leela vanishes into prostitution while the author searches for her. Ultimately Leela loses a tooth in a beating, and she and a friend leave to work in Dubai at the urging of a gangster. You hate to think where she is at this moment.

This book, by its end, seems to have taken something out of Ms. Faleiro. You get the sense she’d like to close with even a hint of optimism, but that’s hard to muster. Instead she quotes the gangster, Sharma, who explains that Leela will probably someday preside over a small brothel herself.

Sharma issues a line that will ring in your ears. “She will sell her daughter, even if she is her only child, her only family, because her mother sold her, and who is her daughter to deserve better?”

Leela, were she to read “Beautiful Thing,” would probably spark up a cigarette and tell us where to stuff our horror and pity. She’d agree with the dancers who declared, within the author’s earshot, “Tears are the indulgences of those who haven’t suffered enough.”

BEAUTIFUL THING – Inside the Secret World of Bombay’s Dance Bars
By Sonia Faleiro
225 pages. Black Cat. $15.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/01/books/beautiful-thing-by-sonia-faleiro.html?_r=1&emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

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Feb11

Women abducted & sold: Gang busted, two arrested

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Women abducted & sold: Gang busted, two arrested
English: The Delhi Tourist Police, India

Image via Wikipedia

TIMES OF INDIA

NEW DELHI: At a time when several people are being arrested in the AIIMS baby case, police have stumbled upon another gang of traffickers who used to abduct women from various parts of the capital and get them married off in other states for money. Two persons have been arrested from Hardwar and identified as Meena (45) and Vijay Rai (38).

The Outer Delhi police were carrying out raids to trace a 16-year-old girl, who had been kidnapped from the Shahbad Dairy area. After the police rescued the girl from Ghaziabad, it emerged that she was kidnapped by a ‘couple’ and taken to Hardwar where she was forced to marry a man. On her instance, the cops raided a hideout in Hardwar and rescued another woman, who was kidnapped from Old Delhi railway station by the same ‘couple’ after they befriended her while she was waiting for her train to Bihar to her husband on January 17. The duo had abducted the 20-year-old woman, from Ludhiana in Punjab, after sedating her at platform number 1 and took her to Hardwar where they were trying to marry her off.

The cops said the 16-year-old girl was kidnapped on December 18 from the Shahbad Dairy area by Vijay and Meena. The duo allegedly struck a deal with a man identified as Lokendra in Rs 80,000 and got them married. He began to live in Ghaziabad with the girl until the police traced her using electronic surveillance, cops said.

Initially, the girl did not reveal the real story and told cops that she had willingly married him but when she was sent for counselling to an NGO in Delhi, the girl spilled the beans. She gave them the address of the duo in Hardwar where she had been kept initially.

“We formed a police team that was sent to Hardwar to carry out further investigations and arrest the people involved in the racket. The team managed to arrest Meena and Vijay and brought them to Delhi,” said a senior police officer from Outer district.

According to the 20-year-old woman, while she was sitting alone at the platform, “a man wearing an army uniform sat beside me and began to chat. He was joined by another woman. Both became my friends as they said they had to go to Araria as well. They offered me tea and after drinking it, I lost consciousness. The duo then took me with them to Hardwar and kept me at their house.” The accused were about to get her married to a man but came in cops’ net before that.

The victim was brought to Delhi, counselled and sent to a short-stay home for women in distress in Hari Nagar as she did not have a local guardian or a house in Delhi. Later, the cops traced her parents. They came to Delhi and took her back home.

Vijay and Meena are being questioned by the cops. The police suspect that these two arrests may be the tip of the iceberg and, hence, the case has been handed over to the crime branch of Delhi Police.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/Women-abducted-sold-Gang-busted-two-arrested/articleshow/11842579.cms

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Feb5

Trafficked Raj girls tell stories of their plight

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Trafficked Raj girls tell stories of their plight

Udaipur (Raj): Life had become hell for Sugna Kumari four years ago as the 15-year-old girl from a remote village here had to work in a Bt cotton field in Gujarat through the day and forced to have sex in the night. The plight of Damini, 16, was no better. She was often beaten for not agreeing to having sex with the middleman who duped her and brought to the neighbouring state.

These are not just one-off stories of bonded labourers, the two tribal girls of Rajasthan being victims of a larger racket in which more than 1,00,000 children were being trafficked from Udaipur district and its neighbouring areas to south Gujarat to pick Bt cotton which needs nimble fingers. “Some men told me that they will give me lot of money for the work. A big car came to my village that night and took me and my friends to Gujarat,” says Sugna.

“But things were totally different there. We were forced to work the whole day and kept in a small tent near the field with some 20 inmates including boys. They even forced us to have sex and those who opposed were beaten up,” she recalls. “Like these children, there were many girls who had to go through this misery in Gujarat every year and the condition for boys there was not smoother either,” Dola Mohapatra, executive director of ChildFund-India, which is working in rescuing and rehabilitation of such children in the region, told PTI. “They had to wake up early in the morning and work in muddy fields laced with pesticides. Moreover, they had to suffer verbal and physically abuse if they falter in their work.”

PTI

Jan14

Trafficking for Forced Marriage – Bride Says Marriage Was Arranged in Hell

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Trafficking for Forced Marriage – Bride Says Marriage Was Arranged in Hell

By DAN MCCUEIN COURT HOUSE NEWS SERVICE

(CN) – A young woman sued her in-laws-by-arranged-marriage, claiming they brought her to the United States from India in a blatant act of human trafficking, then consigned her to “modern-day slavery.”  Diptiben Mistry was a college student studying hotel and tourism management when she and her family met defendants Chandrakant and Nilam Udwadia in Navsai, Gujarat, India in January 2007. After meeting for just 30 minutes, she says, her father agreed that she would marry the Udwadias’ son, Himansu. The only provision was that she be allowed to complete her remaining year in college and earn her bachelor’s degree. The Udwadias agreed and the wedding took place a week later.
But things quickly went downhill, Mistry says.

“Defendants fraudulently induced Mistry to marry their son, Himansu Udwadia, misrepresenting the terms of marriage,” the complaint states. “Defendants then transported Mistry from India to their home in the United States. Using psychological coercion, physical violence, and threats of divorce and return to India as a stigmatized woman, Defendants forced Mistry to provide daily domestic labor for them, in violation of international, federal, and state laws.

“During the period that Mistry was forced to work for defendants, defendants never paid Mistry. Defendants held Mistry as a virtual prisoner in their residence, restricting her access to food, depriving her of medical care, subjecting her to verbal, psychological, and physical abuse, and keeping her under constant surveillance. Defendants controlled every aspect of Mistry’s life, including when she ate, slept, and showered, stripping her of any means of independence, subjecting her to almost constant surveillance, and dictating the minutiae of her daily life.

“Indian culture dictates that young women respect and obey their elder relatives. Upon marriage, a woman is expected to obey her husband and his family members. Divorce is considered extremely shameful in Indian society, particularly for women, and a divorced woman, as well as her entire family, may be considered permanently stigmatized in the eyes of their community. Defendants effectively leveraged these cultural practices to coerce Mistry into providing domestic labor.

“Defendants knowingly and willfully rendered Mistry isolated, helpless, and utterly dependent upon them in order to constructively imprison her. Defendants forced her to work long hours on little sleep and with little to no human contact outside of themselves. They prohibited Mistry from speaking privately with her own family in India. They deprived her of any money or knowledge of how to arrange for transportation. Defendants controlled every aspect of her life, down to the smallest detail, creating an atmosphere of complete control and effectively ensuring that Mistry could not escape. Defendants, through their acts and omissions, actively contributed to and promoted Mistry’s helplessness in order to maintain complete control over her and in doing so, created a coercive environment far more effective than mere locked doors or physical threats.

By fraudulently luring Mistry to the United States under the guise of marriage to their son and subjecting Mistry to forced labor, defendants committed human trafficking. Mistry seeks damages and restitution for unpaid wages, damages for trafficking her into the United States under false pretenses, and damages for breach of contract.” The ordeal began right after the wedding, which was on Feb. 3, 2007, Mistry says, when her new in-laws canceled her cell phone subscription: “one of their first acts of limiting Mistry’s ability to communicate with her family.”
Newlywed Indian couples often travel to visit relatives after their honeymoon, and usually travel unaccompanied. “However, following the week-long honeymoon, defendants insisted that they travel with Himansu and Dipti to visit relatives in India,” she says.

 ”After the wedding, the honeymoon, and the travel around India to visit relatives, Mistry’s exams at school were starting, but Chandrakant would not permit her to return to school. Instead, Chandrakant told Mistry that she needed to return to the United States with them immediately and would not be permitted to finished her education in India, as contracted for in her marriage agreement,” according to the complaint.

Then, Mistry says, she came to find out that her in-laws had begun the visa process through the U.S. Embassy in India long before she had ever met the Udwadia family, and that her visa had been obtained fraudulently.”Defendants were looking for any ‘bride’ that could fulfill a domestic servant role in their household,” she says.

The day after they arrived in the United States, she says, Chandrakant took all of her belongings away, confiscated her passport and jewelry and put them in a safe deposit box at his bank. She says they insisted that she and her husband never sleep alone, but share their bed with a younger son, Prasad. “During Mistry’s time living with defendants in Oklahoma, defendants subjected Mistry to forced labor by requiring her to perform all domestic work while closely monitored by Chandrakant,” Mistry says. “Chandrakant did not allow Mistry to take breaks from her daily household chores except to study for her bookkeeping course and a bank teller certificate, which he forced her to obtain so that she could help him with his accounting business.

“If at any point Mistry chose not to follow Chandrakant’s orders, she would be subjected to verbal and physical abuse, such as slapping, yelling insults, or throwing items at Mistry.
“Mistry was responsible for all domestic work in the defendants’ home. She was expected to work from approximately 5 am to 11 pm each day. “Mistry worked for defendants in their Oklahoma home seven days a week, eighteen hours a day, for eight months, accruing approximately 4,320 total hours from April 3, 2007 to October 19, 2007.”

Throughout this time, she says, “Chandrakant supervised Mistry closely and told her exactly what chores to do, what to cook, and which pots, pans and utensils to use. Chandrakant constantly critiqued Mistry’s work, telling her she was stupid and did not know how to do things correctly. Chandrakant once hit Mistry on the head during prayers because she made a mistake. …      “Nilam [her mother-in-law] would report to Chandrakant what Mistry did throughout the day. She would report even the smallest detail, including when Mistry had a snack.”

 When her husband moved to Georgia in May 2007, she says, he wanted to take her with him, but “Chandrakant would not permit it. From May 17, 2007 to October 19, 2007, defendants kept Mistry and Himansu apart” In addition to forced labor, she says, her in-laws subjected her to “deprivation of food, deprivation of medical care and sexual assault.” The complaint states: “One night, Chandrakant came into Mistry’s room around 1 am, locking the door behind him. Chandrakant began touching her. Mistry got up from the bed, and Chandrakant chased her around the room. Mistry became frightened and screamed, so Chandrakant told Mistry to go outside, leaving her standing in the cold for fifteen to twenty minutes. When Chandrakant allowed Mistry back inside, he told her not to tell anyone what had transpired in the bedroom. Otherwise, Chandrakant told her, he would send Mistry back to India.”

Finally, she says, her in-laws demanded that their son divorce her and send her back to India. When he refused, she says, they tricked the couple by saying Mistry should go back to India to finish her studies. While she was there, the Udwadias went ahead with their plans to have their son divorce her. Although she returned to the United States to speak with Himansu directly, he refused to speak with her. Since the divorce became final, she says, she has been unable to retrieve her marital property or the items Chandrakant confiscated from her when she first arrived in the United States.

She seeks compensatory, punitive and statutory damages for forced labor, human trafficking for the purpose of forced labor, violations of the Oklahoma Human Trafficking Act, involuntary servitude and forced labor in violation of the Laws of Nations Alien Tort Statute. She is represented in Oklahoma City Federal Court by Amy Sherry Fischer, of Foliart, Huff, Ottaway & Bottom in Oklahoma City.

http://www.courthousenews.com/2012/01/13/43033.htm

Jan4

Bangladesh-India border: “Wall of Death”

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Bangladesh-India border: “Wall of Death”

Life at the India-Bangladesh border is hostile and strange, and often deadly.

English: BSF men helping boder population in t...

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RANGPUR, Bangladesh — “If they see me talking to you, they’re going to give me a lot of trouble,” says Abdul Rahim. Standing at the very edge of his property on the Bangladesh-India border, the 48-year-old Indian farmer is half a step away from illegally crossing into the Bangladeshi village of Chander Haat. But it’s not the possibility of getting caught trespassing by Bangladeshi border guards that worries him. Behind Rahim, a couple hundred meters into the Indian side of the border, is the world’s longest — and bloodiest — barbed wire fence. Dubbed the “wall of death” by locals, the 4,000 km barrier spans the length of the fifth-longest border in the world, and is manned by India’s Border Security Force (BSF), whose guards kill both Bangladeshis and Indians with impunity. Rahim claims the BSF routinely harasses him and has occasionally beaten him on suspicion of aiding or sheltering illegal Bangladeshi migrants and smugglers. It’s a tense border. Despite India helping Bangladesh gain independence in 1971, relations between the two countries have remained strained since the 1947 partition of India, when the subcontinent was split along religious lines, creating East Pakistan where present-day Bangladesh is. Partition resulted in a bloodbath, with over 1 million killed in the space of a few months and more than 10 million Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs displaced in one of the largest mass migrations in human history. Little progress has been made over decades between the two countries on hot-button issues like smuggling, supplying arms and refuge to Indian insurgents, and control of the numerous rivers that flow through both countries.  But the standout crisis dominating Indian discourse is undocumented migrants. Official estimates are that there are 2 million undocumented Bangladeshi migrants in India. A number frequently reported in India media is 20 million. Like Mexican undocumented migrants in the United States, their Bangladeshi counterparts are the favored scapegoats of the Indian right — blamed for unemployment, crime, terrorism, “low-key Talibanization,” and “disturbing our indian sex-ratio statistics.” This has created a situation where many say India’s border guards are trigger-happy.  On Jan. 7, 2011, Felani Khatun and her father arrived at the barbed wire a little after the early morning call to prayer had rung out from a nearby mosque. Dressed up in traditional bridal wear and wedding jewelry, the drowsy 15 year old had fallen asleep several times during their overnight journey to the border and could barely keep her eyes open.

Felani, born in India to parents who were undocumented migrants there, was returning to Bangladesh to get married. But it was daylight now, and Felani’s father Nurul Islam was afraid. The local smugglers he had paid Rs 3000 ($70) to help him and his daughter across insisted however that everything was fine, and the two began to climb up the ladder that had been arranged for them. Nurul Islam made it over successfully. Moments later, as Felani reached the top of the 2.5m high fence, Indian border guards who had spotted them came running out and shot her dead from close range. “[The BSF shot] without any warning. I don’t understand why they didn’t shout anything,” remembers Nurul Islam, who has been relocated with the rest of his family to the Bangladeshi village of Ramkhana, near where his daughter died. “I wish they’d said ‘stop.’ If they’d just said ‘stop’ she would’ve been saved.” Felani’s lifeless body hung from the fence for five hours, in full view of Bangladeshi and Indian farmers living nearby. Eventually, the BSF slung her hands and feet onto a bamboo pole and took her away. It was over 30 hours before her body was handed over to Bangladeshi authorities and returned to her father. “They took her jewelry,” Nurul Islam said, sardonically. A photo, first published in Indian newspaper Anandabazaar, of Felani’s corpse hanging from the fence sparked a huge uproar in Bangladeshi media. The Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram announced during a visit to Dhaka in July that the BSF would use non-lethal weapons, and that they would no longer shoot at civilians under any circumstances. Stemming the cattle trade Six months later the deaths on the border continue to pile up. Except now they come about in more creative ways. Shootings are rarer, but Bangladeshi border guards report recent incidents of fatal beatings, strangling, stoning, and poisonous injections. Human rights group Odhikar accuses the BSF of killing over 1,000 Bangladeshis in the past decade. The BSF themselves admit responsibility for the deaths of 364 Bangladeshis and 164 Indians since 2006. That was when their government began constructing the fence, inspired by Israel’s West Bank barrier. But neither the barbed wire nor the extrajudicial murders have been successful in stopping a lucrative, illicit trade in cattle. Cows in Bangladesh sell for three to four times what they fetch in India, and resourceful traffickers have devised new, brutal ways to get around the obstacle. Rahim, the Indian farmer who witnesses this happen almost nightly, describes the procedure: “They use ramps to get the cows up to the middle part of the wire fence. The wires here are a little bit further apart than the rest of the fence. They loosen the wires a little bit more, then they bind the legs and the mouth of the cow, haul it up the ramp and pass it through to the other side.” “It takes 10 minutes to get 50 cows through,” says Rahim, “But it’s not easy to get 10 minutes. The smugglers always follow the BSF, keeping an eye on them, waiting for an opportunity.” The BSF guards aren’t cartoon villains, and Rahim is aware that they are doing a dangerous job. “The smugglers are reckless people,” he says, “they don’t hesitate to attack the BSF. They are armed with sickles, knives, and they threaten the BSF. They say ‘leave us alone if you fear for your life, we’re here to die anyway’.” Though the anti-smuggling and anti-immigration efficacy of South Asia’s Berlin Wall is debatable, its impact on those living nearby is not. Bangladeshis have predictably bristled at the prospect of being corralled in by their giant neighbor, which surrounds them on the west, north, and east, and which they have always been a little bit paranoid about. With a growing population of 150 million packed into an area smaller than Iowa, the fence is also making many Bangladeshis claustrophobic. “A barbed wire fence is a psychological expression of hegemony. They have surrounded the people of Bangladesh on three sides with barbed wire,” said Adilur Rahman, the general secretary of Dhaka based rights group Odhikar, “High powered floodlights, barb wire… it looks like a World War II concentration camp.” The floodlights beam directly into the home of 9-year-old Anis Ahmed, who complains that they are so bright he has trouble sleeping at night. 

Hostilities run deep Anis works on his family’s farm every day on the Bangladesh side of the border near the northern village of Amgaon. Their land goes right up to the border, where lush green rows of rice plants imperceptibly switch from Bangladeshi to Indian. According to international regulations, the fence cannot be closer than 150 meters to the actual border, so the actual fence falls behind rows of Indian crops. There are no clearly visible signs demarcating the exact point where Bangladeshi soil becomes Indian. Locals are simply expected to know where the line is. Most of them do, and they stay away. But the precocious Anis and his 11-year-old cousin Shohir Jamal often walk across it to examine what lies beyond the fence. “We go up to see the barbed wire fence,” says Anis, “When we go up to it they [the BSF guards] mock us, scold us. They say ‘Ei Bengali admi, bhago giya, bhago giya [hey Bengali, go away].’ They swear a lot at us, but things we don’t understand really.” The children here are growing up surrounded by an atmosphere of hostility and suspicion. Everyone in their village is viewed as a potential smuggler or an accomplice of smugglers. Many are. People here are very poor, and supplementary income is precious. Manik, the local schoolteacher, was recently arrested and given three years detention by the BSF during his first foray into cattle smuggling. Akbar Ali, an elected member of the local government here, has just returned having completed his own three-year term for trafficking cows. Suspicions run deep. During the day Anis and Shohir work side by side with the Indian farmers like Rahim, whose crops fall between the border with Bangladesh and the barbed wire fence. The proximity, however, does not imply interaction. “They don’t talk to us. The BSF don’t want them to have a good relationship with Bangladeshis,” says Anis, “They [the BSF] worry that they’ll end up helping people cross the border.” Rahim regrets this new distance with once close neighbors. “When we were children we used to play together every day,” he recalls. “We used to eat at each others’ houses. I went to school in Bangladesh.” Because the fence had to be built 150 meters within Indian territory, Rahim and more than 100,000 other Indians have found themselves on the wrong side of the barbed wire. Rahim is cut off from the rest of his country, trapped within a slice of land about as wide as an airport runway. The gates at the fence open only for three hours: 8:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m., noon to 1:00 p.m., and 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. These are the only times when Rahim and his family can move back and forth to visit relatives, go shopping, or send their kids to school. Children frequently miss school because they arrive after the gate has been closed. Rahim’s daughter lives with a relative 40 kilometers behind the wire. He estimates that he sees her only once in five months or so. “If we go to shop at 4:00 p.m., we have to make sure we’re back by 5:00 p.m., otherwise we’re locked out for the night,” he complains. As he speaks, a woman comes wading through a stream on the Bangladeshi side of the border. She is carrying multiple cell phones in her hands. “There’s no electricity in our houses,” explains Rahim, “We’re cut off from the electrical grid. So we have to sneak over to Bangladesh when the guards aren’t looking to charge our phones.” “The wire fence makes us feel like prisoners,” he said. One day, when he has saved enough, Rahim says he plans to move to the other side of the fence. His expectations aren’t high for what may be in store there, but at least he will have ended his status as collateral damage of a stalemate between nation-states.

http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/asia-pacific/india/111225/india-bangladesh-border

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Jan4

CBI ESTABLISHES AN ANTI HUMAN TRAFFICKING UNIT; SETS UP EXCLUSIVE HELPLINE NUMBER AND ANNOUNCES REWARD TO COMBAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING

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CBI ESTABLISHES AN ANTI HUMAN TRAFFICKING UNIT; SETS UP EXCLUSIVE HELPLINE NUMBER AND ANNOUNCES REWARD TO COMBAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING
Central Bureau of Investigation

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CENTRAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
(INFORMATION SECTION)
5-B, CGO COMPLEX, LODHI ROAD,
NEW DELHI – 110003
PRESS RELEASE
NEW DELHI, DATED:-04.01.2012
 

CBI  ESTABLISHES AN ANTI HUMAN TRAFFICKING UNIT

SETS UP EXCLUSIVE HELPLINE NUMBER AND ANNOUNCES REWARD TO COMBAT HUMAN TRAFFICKING

The Central Bureau of Investigation has designated one Unit in Special Crime Zone of CBI in Delhi as Anti-Human Trafficking Unit. This unit will be responsible for collecting, collating & analyzing data on kidnapping and abduction of persons from all over India.  The unit will also develop actionable intelligence to conduct operations against gangs involved in trafficking, especially of children & women for the purpose of exploitation, such as beggary and prostitution.  This unit would also liaise with NGOs involved in this field.

A helpline number 011-24368638 has been established by CBI, on which any person having inputs about such gangs can give information.  It has also been decided that person giving information leading to arrest and criminal action against such gangs would be rewarded upto Rs.Two Lakh.  The Government of India has already designated all Police Officers of the rank of Inspector and above in CBI as “Trafficking Police Officers” to exercise powers of investigation under the “Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956” and other laws dealing with sexual exploitation of persons.

 –
Spokesperson, CBI
CBI ( HQ), 5-B, CGO Complex,
Lodhi Road, New Delhi-110 003
Tel/fax: 011-24361156
EPABX: 011-24360334, 24360422 & 24362828
Extns: 5121 & 4121
website: http://www.cbi.gov.in

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Dec30

Policing: Solving tough crime mysteries

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Policing: Solving tough crime mysteries
Ashok-Takalkar

Ashok-Takalkar

MIDDAY  MUMBAI

Ashok Takalkar 
The resourceful police constable
A good network of sources and timely inputs help unravel the toughest crime mysteries in seconds. Constable Ashok Takalkar, attached to the Social Security Cell, is a rich man in terms of sources who give him timely inputs.
Out of 53 cases registered under the Prevention of Immoral Trafficking Act this year, in a majority of cases it was Takalkar who provided inputs. Dedicated policemen like him helped rescue many girls who were forced into prostitution and paved the way for the arrest of their inhuman traffickers, who either cheated them by promising them a job or marriage.
Ask Takalkar about his proudest moment and he will talk about the rescue of a minor girl hours before she was forced into prostitution. ”The rescue of the 16-year-old Bangladeshi girl who was lured into marriage and brought to Pune was no doubt the proudest moment for all of us. The girl was rescued hours before her trafficker had plans to sell her to brothel manager. More importantly, her so-called husband, a trafficker and one more woman were also arrested at the same time,” he says.
Asked how he builds sources, his answer is: “Interrogation. I contact each and every person mentioned by victims during their questioning and have managed to keep my sources well oiled over the years.” Takalkar, who has completed 30 years of service as a policeman, says it is team work when the rescue operation is successful and says encouragement and guidance from his top officers keeps him going.
Police Inspector Bhanupratap Barge, in-charge of Social Security Cell, said: “Timely rewards and appreciation of subordinate officers provides them with an impetus to work harder, which Takalkar has always followed.”
Social Security Cell score board
Prevention of Immroral Trafficing Act cases
2011: 53
2010: 33
Traffickers and brothel managers arrested
2011: 112
2010: 65
Number of people rescued by SS cell
2011: Number of minors rescued stands at 18, majors at 35
2010: Minors 28, majors 28

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2011/dec/301211-news-pune-Newsmakers-of-the-year.htm