‘Awareness camps saved 90 trafficked girls last month’
Times of India | 31 July 2025
Kolkata: Bengal reported approximately 67 cases of trafficking, according to the last NCRB report tabled in 2022. The report made it clear that migrants from vulnerable regions often become targets for traffickers, who lure them with false promises of employment and push them into exploitative conditions.
"Multiple awareness camps at the ground level by the state, NGOs, and central agencies — from schools to railway stations— have helped save more than 90 women and girls in the past month alone. The RPF-Just Rights for Children (with 400 NGOs under one umbrella) combination has just begun tasting success here, just like in a few other parts of India," said a spokesperson for Shakti Vahini, an NGO that works with trafficking victims across Bengal.
According to NGO workers, the top concern areas remain north Bengal and the Sundarbans. To try and negate illegal trafficking, multiple NGOs have come together with both state and central agencies, in Alipurduar, Jalpaiguri, Kalimpong, and Barupur police district.
The joint efforts by state police, along with RPF and SSB, are also using technology, like facial recognition systems at railway stations, to recognise habitual sexual offenders. This is how a girl trafficked from Bengal to the Andamans was rescued in 24 hours, said cops. A local NGO alerted police, who contacted the NGO at the destination, and everyone acted.
Several local efforts, police and NGO sources said, have also worked in the past year. However, the BNS Act that provides legal procedures from source to destination is the most important to "break the chain", they felt. "Every trafficked child is part of a chain: source, transit, and destination. The trafficker is part of a system. The only way to stop the system is to break every link. That means prosecuting recruiters, transporters, and buyers, not just employers. We must cut off trafficking by making it economically unviable — attaching properties, imposing fines, cancelling procurement, blacklisting repeat offenders, and shutting down premises," said social activist Bhuwan Ribhu.