Treat the child victim (of trafficking) with sympathy and not as a criminal”. This explains the thrust of India’s first-ever “protocol for Pre-Rescue, Rescue and Post-Rescue Operations of Child Victim of Trafficking for Commercial Sexual Exploitation” drawn up by the Ministry of Women and Child Development.

The guidelines are in response to a notice issued by the Supreme Court on a petition by Prajwala, a Hyderabad-based Society, which requested the court to direct the Centre and states to frame guidelines for the child victims.

The Society referred to Trafficking Victims Protection Act of the United States, which was the first US law to advocate a sympathetic treatment to such persons, and sought provisions for India, which admittedly has three million victims.

Presenting the norms to SC, the Centre also agreed that there would be no more mass raids of trafficked women and children. Instead, the protocol lays stress on a more personalised approach.

It calls on states to develop an anti-trafficking policy specifying victim-friendly provisions, staring with a confidential database of traffickers, brothel owners, informants, decoy customers, cases registered and status of cases besides other relevant information. A victim, according to the norms, should on rescue be repatriated to the home state with government bearing the expenses.

A first, states would create a separate budget for repatriation of the victims. There are also provisions for assigning trained Child Welfare Officers in every police station and building separate hygienic toilets for women in the stations.

Under the “strategy for pre-rescue operations”, police are required to identify the children using decoy customers, authenticate available data and involve NGOs and social workers in rescue efforts. To maintain secrecy of rescue operations, it empowers the team leader to take into custody mobile phones and other modes of communication of team members prior to operation.

... contd.