JAIPUR: Nearly 284 children were rescued and 55 child traffickers were arrested from various West Bengal-bound trains in the past 24 hours in Bharatpur and Jaipur. These kids were being transported to Bihar and Bengal and as many as 19 out of the 284 were from Jaipur itself.

The Rajasthan State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (RSCPCR) officials— with the help of the Jaipur and Bharatpur collectors and Government Railway Police (GRP) — raided various trains to rescue children being trafficked. Even more shocking is the fact that 265 of the rescued children fall in the age group of 7-14 years. In the first raid,168 children were recovered at Bharatpur railway station on Saturday. Later on Sunday, the Jaipur district administration and the police rescued another 63 children at Jaipur railway station at 2am from the Jodhpur-Howrah, while another 34 children were rescued from Bharatpur railway station from the Ajmer-Sealdah on Sunday afternoon.

“The rescued children were employed at Bhatta Basti area in Jaipur as bangle workers and they were being transported to Bengal and Bihar when we rescued them from various trains,” Govind Beniwal, RSCPCR member said.

In Jaipur, when collector T Ravikant received the information about child trafficking, he constituted a team comprising sub divisional magistrate Sovila Mathur and Naib-tehsildar Radheyshyam Meena and other officials. The team along with GRP, RSCPCR officials, and NGO officials reached the Jaipur railway station at around 11pm.

Off-season in Raj, agents were taking kids to Bengal

With the summer approaching, the demand for cheap child labour increases in states like Jharkhand and West Bengal , where the 168 rescued children were being taken to on Saturday.

The children aged between 5 and 12 years were rescued by the government railway police (GRP) from the Ajmer-Sealdah Express in Bharatpur. Another 100 children were rescued in Jaipur and Bharatpur on Sunday.

“For small-scale industries that make bangles, quilt and mattresses in Rajasthan, this is off season. Therefore, the agents take children to work in factories in West Bengal,” a senior officer of the GRP said on Sunday.

These children come from extremely poor families and were sold off to the agents by parents for a meagre amount. Most of them, according to the investigations, belong to Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

Police found that the rescued children were working in bangle manufacturing factories in areas including Bhatta Basti on the city outskirts. Following an increase in police vigil in the area, the agents decided to quickly migrate along with the children.

“Some of the children told us that in their native villages they had just one meal in a day which comprised rice. But, after coming to the city and working in factories, they earn anywhere between Rs 1,500 and Rs 2,000 per month along with two meals,” a senior GRP officer, who is part of the investigating team, said.

Used to living in abject poverty, the children never complained of being exploited and ill-treated at work. Moreover, they have not yet revealed the names of their agents or places where they worked, the police said. “The children are not willing to speak up and cooperate. It could be that they are terrified of the agents. The suspected agents though are claiming that they were taking the children back to their villages in Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal,” said Gyan Prakash Shukla, district collector, Bharatpur.

The collector had tipped off the police on the trafficking of children on Saturday. He however said that the GRP could have acted more promptly and caught the agents in Jaipur from where the children boarded the train. “Had they crossed the state via Bharatpur, it would have been difficult for us to rescue them. I think the GRP, Jaipur could have acted better in this case to rescue them in Jaipur,” he added.

The children are being kept at Apna Ghar, an NGO for orphan children.

