INDIA: Human rights defenders assaulted by traffickers and the AHTU look on

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has received information concerning a case of human trafficking and child and bonded labour at a brick kiln, from GURIA, a human rights organisation working in Varanasi, located in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The details of the case suggest that state government officers, including the labour officer, the officers at the Anti-Human Trafficking Unit (AHTU), and the local police officers have connived with the brick kiln owner to save the owner from prosecution. Worse, the police have registered a criminal case against the human rights defenders associated with GURIA, despite the kiln owner and his hired thugs having assaulted GURIA’s staff members in police presence. GURIA has requested the AHRC to issue an Urgent Appeal in this case and to write to the Government of India as well as the relevant mandate holders at the UN for appropriate intervention in the case. 

CASE NARRATIVE:

After receiving information concerning children and other bonded labourers held at the local brick kiln, GURIA filed a complaint on 5 June 2014, before the District Magistrate, Varanasi, requesting the officer to take immediate action to rescue the children as well as the bonded labourers. Upon receipt of this complaint, the Additional District Magistrate (Economic), Varanasi, ordered the Assistant Labour Commissioner Varanasi to take appropriate action. 

Human rights defenders associated with GURIA reached the office of the Assistant Labour Commissioner Varanasi on 5 May 2014 and showed the officer photographs of the children held as bonded labourers and working at the kiln. The officer however, asked the human rights defenders to return after 12 June 2014. The human rights defenders refused this demand and insisted that the officer must take immediate action in the case, failing which the rescue of the children and bonded labourers will become impossible. Accepting the request, the officer asked the human rights defenders to return to his office at 7 a.m., the next day.  

The following day, the officer formed a team for the rescue. The team comprised officers from the labour department, the AHTU, and police officers from the Lohta Police Station. 

On 6 June, when the staff from GURIA reached the labour office and advised the officers to take enough vehicles to bring the rescued children and persons from the kiln, the officers refused to take additional vehicles and informed the human rights defenders that their official vehicle is sufficient for the rescue. 

At about 8 a.m., the officers, along with staff from GURIA reached the brick kiln. From the kiln they managed to rescue 20 children and 6 labourers. The officers then asked the children and the labourers to board the vehicle in which the officers had arrived. 

However, before the vehicle was started, the officers had a conversation with the owner of the brick kiln, and thereafter the children were ordered to get out from the vehicle and go back to the kiln. At this turn of events, the human rights defenders associated with GURIA protested and questioned the officers for letting the children go. Contrary to their expectations, they were shocked to find the children being handed back to the kiln owner. 

Suddenly, a local thugs and the management of the brick kiln started verbally abusing the human rights defenders associating with GURIA. They then proceeded to assault the human rights defenders. The police officers, the labour officers, and the officer from the AHTU did not intervene to rescue the rights defenders from being assaulted. 

Later, the officers returned to the district headquarters. 

The brick kiln owner, meanwhile, filed a complaint at the Lohta Police Station against two staff members of GURIA. The complaint is registered under Sections 186, 353, 363 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.  Section 186 prescribes punishment for anyone obstructing a public servant in discharge of his public functions. Section 353 prescribes punishment for assault or criminal force to deter a public servant from the discharge of his duties. Section 363 refers to punishment for kidnapping. The complaint filed by the brick kiln owner is registered as Crime 93/2014 of the Lohta Police Station. The crime is registered against two human rights defenders, (i) Mr. Umar Shankar Yadav and (ii) Mr Sunil Kumar. The crime mentions there being 18 unidentified persons who committed the offence along with two staff members associated with GURIA. 

On the same day, GURIA filed yet another complaint to the District Magistrate, Varanasi, as well as to the Senior Superintendent of Police, detailing what had occurred in the morning and how the officers colluded with the brick kiln management, failing to rescue the children and persons held as bonded labourers at the kiln. 

The district administration has not taken any action to this date on this petition. 

Aggrieved by the criminal nexus between the district administration, the AHTU, the police officers, and the kiln management, which has resulted in a failed rescue attempt of 20 children and 6 bonded labourers, as well as against the fabricated case filed against staff members of GURIA, the organization has approached the High Court of Allahabad. The writ petition filed in the High Court seeks an order, under the Writ of Certiorari, to quash the First Information Report, and to direct the government to take appropriate action against the officers who have violated the law and have now misused the process of law to register a fabricated case against the rights defenders.

BACKGROUND INFORMATION:

India is a party to the United Nations Protocol to prevent, suppress, and punish trafficking in persons, especially women and children, which supplements the United Nation’s Convention against transnational organized crimes. The institution of AHTUs is an attempt by the Union Government to investigate, rescue, and relocate persons who are held by traffickers. 

Bonded labour is prohibited in India under the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act 1976. Unfortunately, human trafficking and the practice of bonded labour are widespread in India. Owing to extreme forms of poverty and associated financial debt associated, human traffickers find it relatively easy to locate, purchase, and sell persons from remote villages to industries in large towns in India. 

Persons trafficked are forced to work as bonded labourers in some of the most inhumane conditions known. This modern day slavery depends on the fear levelled on bonded labourers by their owners, who resort to brute forms of cruelty upon the labourers. When the labourers fail to comply, family members in the villages face the wrath. This slave practice also flourishes due to entrenched corruption in the administrative setup at all levels in India. Many leading politicians and businessmen in India are infamous for forcing bonded labourers to work for industries in which they have financial stakes.

Despite the constitution of the AHTUs, it is impossible to rescue persons from bonded labour and human trafficking, especially women and children, without the help of local police and the local administration. Many police officers have financial stakes in local small-scale and large-scale industries, which depend heavily on trafficked labourers, available aplenty across the remote villages of India. 

A large number of construction companies in India employ bonded labourers. The business of bonded labour in India is estimated to generate a profit for middlemen as well as business houses to the tune of about $ USD 4 billion each year. This money can easily fetch political as well as police patronage to protect the criminal syndicates that profit out of buying and selling human beings, including women and children, in India.

Varanasi in the state of Uttar Pradesh is particularly a hub for human trafficking in South Asia. Persons trafficked into Varanasi are mostly women and children from distant northern villages of India, as well as neighbouring countries like Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, and Myanmar. 

Other than the constitution of the AHTUs, a reasonable and pragmatic operational protocol to deal with children and women rescued from human trafficking does not exist in practice in many parts of India. Women and children rescued from traffickers, brothels, and red-light areas in India often have to spend days if not weeks in police custody. 

Many child and women helplines mandated to provide interim rescue homes are dysfunctional across the country. Inadequate supervision by the Union Ministry responsible for dealing with women and children rescued from human trafficking – the Ministry of Women and Child Welfare – contributes to the neglect.

The bottom line that decides the success and failure of rescue is the honest cooperation of the local police in each rescue mission. Unfortunately, the biggest challenge in dealing with human trafficking in India is precisely the rooted corruption and the criminal nature of the police officers at the local level. This reflects in the case at hand as well. The police and other state government officers have stood by and watched criminals assault human rights defenders, and, at the same time, state officers mandated to rescue and protect children from traffickers have allowed the children and persons rescued from bonded labour to be handed back to the brick kiln owner, who continues to hold these persons as bonded labourers at his establishment even today.

GURIA is an NGO working against human trafficking, especially forced labour and commercial sexual exploitation of children in Uttar Pradesh. So far GURIA has rescued 163 girls from traffickers and brothel keepers in Uttar Pradesh. GURIA has also prevented 230 girls from second-generation prostitution/trafficking in the red-light areas and has since then been counselling and interacting with the survivors in order to assist them restore normal life with human dignity.

Guria is also contesting 323 cases against 864 human traffickers at the trial courts, the High Court and the Supreme Court. GURIA is a member of the Central Advisory Committee constituted by the Government of India to combating trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation, constituted by the Ministry of Women and Child Development. GURIA was a member in two enquiry committees set up by the National Commission for Women to probe women/girls being trafficked for prostitution from drought hit Bundelkhand region and Azamgarh district of Uttar Pradesh. 

GURIA is also actively involved in the drafting of the National Child Policy 2011, The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Bill 2012 and on the Immoral Traffic Prevention (Amendment) Bill 2006. GURIA also offer help as a resource organisation for educating the judiciary, the police, SSB (Indo-Nepal Border Force) through the National Legal Services Authority of India and National Institute for Public Cooperation and Child Development (NIPCCD). 

GURIA has filed public interest litigation (Writ Petition [Civil] 167 of 2014 Guria Swayam Sevi Sansthan vs Union of India & others) before the Supreme Court seeking orders and guidelines concerning the rescue of minors trafficked, enslaved and forced into prostitution in the brothels in India in which notice Apex Court has issued notice to all the respondent states. GURIA is also a party in a public interest litigation before the Supreme Court seeking relief for an on behalf of the children employed in circus and their forced labour in the entertainment industry (Writ Petition-Civil 51 of 2006 Bachpan Bachao Andolan vs Union Of India & Others). GURIA has also filed two public interest litigations in the high court challenging the illegal detention of rescued girls at the police stations (Writ-PIL 54570 of 2012 Guria Swayam Sevi Sansthan vs State of UP & Others) and against the misuse of the high court’s orders by the human traffickers in collusion with the police (Writ-PIL 31563 of 2014 Guria Swayam Sevi Sansthan vs Union of India & 4 others).

SUGGESTED ACTION:

Kindly write to the authorities cited below, expressing your concern in the case. The AHRC is deeply concerned about the incident and the collusion between government officers and criminal syndicates. The AHRC is writing to the Government of India seeking immediate intervention in this case, to the UN Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of slavery including its cause and its consequences, as well as to the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons especially women and children, seeking an intervention.

To support this case, please click here: SEND APPEAL LETTER