NEW DELHI: Child trafficking in India increased after the pandemic in many states, according to a study. Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Andhra Pradesh are the three states that reported the maximum number of children trafficked between 2016 and 2022.
According to the study, ‘Child Trafficking Report in India’, jointly released by Games 24/7 and the Kailash Satyarthi Children’s Foundation (KSCF), Uttar Pradesh saw a rise from 267 reported incidents in the pre-Covid phase (2016-2019) to 1,214 in the post-Covid phase (2021-2022).
Karnataka showed an 18-fold increase from pre- to post-pandemic figures, with reported incidents soaring from six to 110, the report said. According to rear admiral Rahul Kumar Shrawat, MD of KSCF, “Even as the numbers look grim and worrisome, there is no denying the fact that the way India has dealt with child trafficking in the past decade.”
Prompt and frequent intervention by Central and state governments, as well as law enforcement agencies such as Railways Protection Force and Border Security Force in nabbing the traffickers and spreading awareness, has curtailed the number of trafficked children and led to a visible rise in the number of cases reported.
Jaipur city has emerged as the hotbed of child trafficking, said the report. It further noted while the maximum number of children aged between 13 and 18 years were engaged by most of the industries, the cosmetic industry was found to have engaged children falling under the age group of 5-8 years.
The report says around 80 per cent of the rescued children fall within the age group of 13-18 years. While 80 per cent of the children rescued were adolescents in the age group 13-18 years, 13 per cent of the children were in the age group of 9-12 years and over 2 per cent were younger than 9 years.