NEW DELHI: Victims of
trafficking can have something to cheer about now, thanks to a new manual for
policemen dealing such cases.
The manual was released at India Habitat Centre recently by Gary Lewis,
representative of United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), regional
office for South Asia. UNODC played an
active part in penning the manual, along with former IPS officer and author,
P M Nair.
This manual will form a compulsory training material in all police training
programmes. According to Nair, the manual will be translated into regional languages
so that the state police can access it easily. This job will be done by
professional translators and researchers rather than make-shift translations
by the state police themselves, he added. He also said that the manual will
ensure that trafficked women or children are not harassed or intimidated,
restoring their faith in the police and thereby, making the rehabilitation of
the victims faster.
"This manual will teach the policemen to be more sensitive while dealing
with victims of human trafficking, especially commercial sex workers. They
should be treated as victims rather than criminals," said Nair.
Lewis said that although there are laws in India
pertaining to trafficking, none deals with the sensitivity part of it.
"This training manual will form an integral part of all kinds of police
training throughout the country. Policemen have hardly any knowledge on how
to deal with these victims, so we thought that there is a need for a
structured and coherent training manual," he said.
According to Manjula Krishnan, joint secretary (human trafficking) Union
ministry of women and child development, the issue of treatment towards
trafficking victims has been neglected for long.
"We want to sensitise policemen dealing trafficking cases. When
commercial sex workers re-arrested, police trouble them because they are easy
targets while the brothel owners and pimps go scot-free due to their
connections. And so far child trafficking is concerned, it is a much more
serious crime and a considerable amount of sensitivity does exist in that
sphere. Still there is scope for improvement," she said.
She added that social workers and NGOs too had been roped in for this
purpose.
In India, over 30 lakh women are working as commercial sex workers against
their will and more than two lakh people are believed to be trafficked within
or through the country annually. Nearly 60% of the trafficking victims are
minors.