Bihar’s Dark Side: The Hub of Girl Child Trafficking

• Bhuwan Ribhu, a child rights activist and founder of Just Rights for Children, highlights the issue of girl child trafficking in Bihar.

• Bihar’s system of ‘dance troupes’ and ‘orchestras’ fuels trafficking, exacerbated by lack of regulatory oversight, geography, and poverty.

• Despite being one of India’s most active trafficking destinations, Bihar’s lack of regulatory oversight and social acceptance for girls commodification contribute to the crisis.

• Geography and poverty deepen vulnerability, with the state’s porous border with Nepal and railway connectivity to trafficking-prone states like West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam, and Uttar Pradesh facilitating trafficking flows.

• Traffickers lure girls with promises of good money, stardom, love, marriage, or employment.

• Girls, some as young as 12, are sold to orchestras for as little as ₹10,000, forced to wear inappropriate clothing, dance to vulgar songs, and are punished if they refuse or are raped if they resist.

Child Trafficking in India: A System Failure

• In 2022, 2,878 children were trafficked in India, including 1,059 girls.

• The system is comprehensive, with laws criminalizing child labour, trafficking, and sexual exploitation.

• Conviction rates remain low, with most cases filed as kidnappings or missing person reports.

• Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) are under-resourced, and investigations often collapse due to jurisdictional confusion and bureaucratic delay.

• Despite rescues, many girls are sent back to the same families that sold them.

• Just Rights for Children, a network of over 250 NGOs, approached the Patna High Court for an immediate ban on the employment of minors in orchestras.

• The High Court directed the Bihar government to act without delay, recognising the trafficking and exploitation of children in orchestras as a “serious issue.”

• Prevention must begin where trafficking begins, with schools monitoring attendance and panchayats maintaining migratory registers.

• Transport vigilance must be ramped up, with the Railway Protection Force (RPF) monitoring vulnerable corridors and conducting awareness drives at railway stations.

• Prosecution must be time-bound, rehabilitation must be long-term, and state-supervised.

• Victim compensation schemes must be enforced rigorously.

• The Centre for Legal Action and Behaviour Change (C-Lab) report shows that prosecution is key to securing justice.

• A strategy rooted in prevention, known as PICKET, is needed, starting with ‘Policy’, ‘Institutions’, ‘Convergence’ of agencies, digital infrastructure, and survivor-centred response.

• Knowledge, economic viability, and technology are key tools to dismantle trafficking networks.