Trafficked girls are often 'rescued' by perpetrators: Expert

Bengaluru: Why has Bengaluru become a hub for human trafficking? Why has the city, state or even the country turned a blind eye to the elephant in the room? These were issues raised during a panel discussion on child trafficking here on Friday.
Anita Kanhaya, CEO, Freedom Project; Meena Jain, former chairperson, CWC and Bhaskar Rao, DGP, nodal officer, AHTU, Karnataka participated in the discussion after the launch of Anita Nair's Chain of Custody."The age of girls being trafficked has drastically reduced in a matter of years from 18-22 to 10-16 now," said Anita Kanhaya, adding, "There is a huge demand for it now and with migrant population increasing in the state, the issue has become more pertinent," she added.
There's more awareness about the issue now, said Bhaskar Rao, who added that lawmakers are finding more reasons to discuss the issue with city cops. "About 27 out of 100 questions asked to me by our lawmakers during a legislature session are about trafficking. I believe it's a good sign that awareness is spreading to all corners," he said.
From her experience of working with victims, Meena Jain said one of the biggest challenges during rehabilitation is that "the people looking for them, claiming to be their parents often have fake documents and are, in fact, themselves the traffickers".
Anita Nair's book, through the eyes of a fictional cop, Inspector Gowda, looks at child trafficking embedded deep in the changing culture of Namma Bengaluru. "Gowda anguishes a lot about the issue but continues to be a cop whose hands are tied. Through him, the story is made more immediately available for the reader to understand an issue like child trafficking," she said.