On June 23, Assam police along with Sikkim police rescued 42 children, out of which 30 children and 3 adults from Sikkim and 9 from West Bengal. The rescued children were mostly engaged in domestic help.
A total of 42 children rescued from Sikkim and West Bengal were taken back to Assam on Friday, June 23. As per Sikkim Police, “Assam Police with the help of Sadar Police rescued 30 children and 3 adults mostly working as a domestic help in Sikkim.
“30 children including 12 male and 18 female along with 3 adults were rescued on June 23 by Assam Police with the help of Sadar police at various places around Sikkim” stated Sikkim police.
The rescued children were mostly from the Chirag district of Assam, which falls under Bodoland Territorial region. After the successful rescue operation, one Krishna Yogi has been arrested and booked under sections of Child Trafficking.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, Chief Minister of Assam while addressing the local media said “It’s an important day for Assam police. We are working against the trafficking of women and children, In the past two months, 107 people including children and women have been rescued. Day before yesterday, we could recover 42, all aged from 9-18 years, from Sikkim. The children were lured with hopes of education and engaged as domestic help. Today, I met the children. In a week, I shall personally visit the homes of these children and speak to their parents and understand the compulsions. I shall also speak to the Bodoland Territorial Council chief Promod Boro about the rehabilitation of the children, whether to put them in residential schools or send them back to their homes.”
“The kingpin of the trafficking racket and his driver has been arrested. The accused allegedly trafficked more than 80 children from Chirang and adjoining areas of the Indo-Bhutan border. Some have even been sent to far-off places like Dubai, and many to Kerala and Maharashtra. While 42 of them have been rescued from Sikkim, the rest are yet to be found. In most of the cases, the bait was the promise of a better life and good education” added the statement
After the children were taken back to Assam Prem Singh Tamang, Chief minister of Sikkim who was on an official tour at Guwahati, addressing the media on Friday congratulated Assam police for their successful rescue operation and mentioned the New Labour registration act which was passed by the Sikkim legislative assembly claims to be one of the step towards stopping the child trafficking in the state.
“Prior to this year there were no such law in Sikkim, but now with this law we can regulate the labourers coming from other parts of the country for work purpose, further those who are minors and of under 18 years of age cannot be registered as labour with the Labour registration act” CM Prem Singh Tamang
The rescued children were taken back to Assam on Friday, where the chief minister of assam Himanta Biswa Sarma met them and discussed on about the future of those 42 rescued children.
Prior to this rescue operation many others has also taken place such as 6 children were rescued by Railway protection earlier this month also in month of June, 31 people, including seven minor girls and 22 women rescued from a Gujarat-bound bus in Assam’s Baksa district, near the Indo-Bhutan border, In September 2020, 12 children, aged between 13 and 17 years, and 15 adults, were trafficked to Arunachal Pradesh from Barpeta district in western Assam
The rate in child trafficking has been taking the upper graph, The data of National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) shows that 201 human trafficking cases were registered in Assam in the year 2019. The state ranked third in the country after Maharashtra with 282 cases and Andhra Pradesh with 245 cases.