The Mumbai Crime Branch till December has more than doubled the number of human trafficking cases it has registered, rescuing minors from child labour, begging racket, flesh trade and even from dance bars. The CB this year extensively applied 370 section of the IPC, which stands for human trafficking in the above-mentioned crimes and especially in child labour and dance bar cases.
Deputy commissioner of police, enforcement, Praveenkumar Patil said that his team of Special Juvenile Aid Police Unit (SJAPU) had rescued as many as 457 children, which is more than the number rescued in the past five years. These children were made to beg on the streets of Mumbai. About 208 cases have been registered this year in which 207 had been arrested for making children beg. In all the cases, the accused were parents or close relatives of the child. Since 2010 till 2014, i.e. in five years, a total of 38 cases have been made in which 49 were arrested and 377 were rescued from child begging, said API Santosh Shinde of SJAPU. NGO Pratham and Salam Balak trust is doing the work of rehabilitating the children by putting them in schools.
Even the number of cases registered against child labour rose from 100 cases in 2014 to 514 cases this year. The number of arrests rose from 329 to 667. The children rescued from child labour rose from 846 to 1009 in this period. Most of them are from UP and Bihar followed by Rajasthan and West Bengal.
ACP Rajdhoot Rupawate said, “Our aim is to eradicate child labour from Mumbai. The children as per law should be in schools. We will continue with the crack down next year too.”
The Asian Age had earlier reported how the SS Branch had rescued 23 minor girls pushed into flesh trade this year while last year nine girls were rescued from prostitution. Another four minor girls forced to work in a tequilla dance bar in Goregoan were rescued too.
