Assam floods aftermath: Relief camps turn hunting ground for human traffickers as populace chases false ray of hope

Editor’s note: In a three-part ground report we seek to cover different aspects of the impact of the annual floods in Assam from its children to the exchequer. Part 1 deals with how trafficking peaks up in these challenging times and how it becomes a lucrative proposition for the unscrupulous. Guwahati: “Flood is the time of traffickers.” Surendra Kumar, DIG (CID), and the nodal officer of Anti-Human Trafficking Cell, Assam, is upfront about this sad reality that inevitably follows the natural disaster that the annual floods are in the northeastern state. [caption id=“attachment_3874727” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  A jute made house is under water in Majidbhita char area of Barpeta district. Image courtesy Aftaf Ali[/caption] Kailash Satyarthi, who was honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014 for his child rights endeavour, has often  voiced concern at the flood-prone state becoming a source for human trafficking rackets. Official numbers second his findings. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, Assam accounted for 22 percent of all the  trafficking cases reported in the country in 2015 with 1,494 reported cases, more than any other state. The state was worst-hit in terms of  child trafficking too with 1,317 or 38 percent of all the cases in the country. Kumar told Firstpost that as a populace migrates under duress, having lost its livelihood, it becomes prone to the ploys of the traffickers. He said desperate, unsuspecting families tend to believe in the agents of the traffickers, who promise them a stable job for their children and women outside. Samina, 15, and her elder sister Sahiba (names changed) were led up the garden path in a similar fashion last year, only to end up being sold to a trafficking racket in Delhi. Samina told Firstpost that her family had taken shelter in Kakdhuwa Reserve relief camp last March after the pre-monsoon flood washed away her house in Gomaphulbari village in Barpeta district. In the camp, she and her sisters met a man who identified himself as Salim Ali. Samina said one day, Sahiba confided in her that Salim wanted to marry her and take both the sisters to Delhi, where he worked as a construction labourer. The girls fell for it and on 11 March, boarded a train with him to Delhi from Guwahati railway station. When they reached Delhi, Salim sold both of them off. Samina said she was sold for Rs50,000 and her sister for Rs 70,000. Samina was taken to a village in Haryana, where she learnt an old man had bought her as his bride. “So old that he could not even walk properly. I was there in the house for three days. During the daytime, I was given all the cleaning, cooking, sweeping for the family of nine. And during the night, the old man used to rape me,” she recalled her horror. Police rescued her three days after she was brought there. Her sister was also rescued and they were taken back to their maternal uncle’s house in their village after spending a month in Haryana’s children shelter. “I often see Salim Ali roaming in this area. Police didn’t do anything to him. But he does not talk to me and my sister,” she said. Last month, Firstpost had carried a story about how trafficking gangs  operate unchecked  in Assam. Such stories, of minors from Assam being trafficked and sold, often get reported in the media. A local newspaper had in August carried a  story about a 14-year-old girl who was rescued from Hisar, Haryana, where she had been sold to a 50-year-old man for Rs1 lakh. Another  report, published in November 2015, had a CID official stating how “at least 129 girls were reported to have been forced into prostitution by traffickers” in 2014. Government on high alert To check trafficking, the administration is keeping a vigil on the relief camps. Government-run relief camps are supervised by a circle officer under the district administration. DIG Kumar said Anti-Human Trafficking Units of the police have been put on high alert. Deputy commissioner of Dhubri district Dhiraj Choudhury told Firstpost that as per the state women’s commission’s recommendations, they have taken up many measures to prevent trafficking among the flood-hit population. He said that apart from rehabilitating the flood-affected, the administration was on a high alert and keeping a keen eye on the relief camps. Tarun Gogoi-led state government had launched a  campaign called Mukti Caravan, spearheaded by Satyarthi’s Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), to create awareness about human trafficking and its agents’ ploys through street plays. NGOs’ complaint Empower People, an NGO working to check human-trafficking in Assam, has a laundry list of complaints against the police department. Its national coordinator and Assam convener, Noor Mohammad, said that while every police station should have an Anti-Human Trafficking Unit, most of them are dormant. Moreover, he said the personnel appointed to these units hardly have any training in preventing trafficking and rescuing the victims. “And then they know the traffickers as well,” he alleged and accused the police of taking it easy. “Sometimes when a girl is rescued, the police do not go to nab the culprits. I often hear them say, ‘Suwalijoni ghuri ahise aru baad diok. Poriyalor naak basaok.’ [Now that the girl is back with the family, let’s rest the case and save the family’s honour.]" Sumedha Kailash, a senior member of BBA and the director of Bal Ashram, stressed upon the importance of identifying the culprits behind trafficking. It’s towards this end, she said, that they had launched Mukti Caravan two years ago in 10 of the worst-affected districts of Assam. Nature’s curse, man’s evil This year’s floods have ravaged 24 of Assam’s 32 districts. According to  media reports, about 77 people have lost their lives and more than a lakh have been rendered homeless. Every year, the Brahmaputra and its dozens of tributaries inundate regions along their course, washing away crops and, at times, levelling houses. Amid such dire straits, poor and unsuspecting families tend to latch on to the ray of hope the traffickers show them. While the administration is making efforts on the ground level to curb trafficking, it has a long way to go, given how deeply Assam is in the grip of the syndicate for whom women and children are merely resources to be procured and sold off. Watch this space for the second part of the series that deals with weather mismanagement and the consequent wastage of public money. The author is a Guwahati based freelance writer and a member of  101Reporters.com, a pan-India network of grassroots reporters. She tweets @syedaambia