Mumbai News: Cops crackdown on gangs involved in illegal trafficking 

Mumbai: With an objective to make the state free of brothels and put an end to the trafficking of women, the Maharashtra Police has begun a crackdown on gangs and agents involved in inter-state and multinational human trafficking business.

The Prevention of Crime Against Women and Children (PCWC) unit of the state police has begun creating a database of people and gangs which they call the ‘transit’ of trafficking which connects the source and the destination to overall bust the routes of trafficking.

Three stages of trafficking

Talking to the Free Press Journal, Special Inspector General (Women and Child Crime Prevention) Deepak Pandey, said, “Trafficking involves three stages: the starting point which is the source from where victims are picked up; transit where they are arranged, targetted, coordinated and transported; and finally women being trafficked. The source and the destination are easier to trace, the transit is where a large number of members are involved, who usually function in a group. Those are our targets. Once transit is busted, the source and destination automatically get invalid.”

Here are ways to tackle this problem

According to Pandey, while Mumbai is a demand creator of trafficked women and children, other parts of the state are not far behind. He added that many women and children are brought from other states and even foreign countries. “These gangs traffic women and children for domestic or forced labour, sexual exploitation, organ transplant and the recent one is illegal adoption. We have come across several cases of these in recent times. There are two ways to tackle the problem - to shut down brothels and bust the transit routes,” added Pandey, who along with his team has subsequently begun strengthening the Special Juvenile Police Unit (SJPU). With SJPU they are creating separate units at all the 1,300 police stations across the state that will specifically tackle complaints of crime against women and children.

Here, every police station will have a dedicated manpower that will look into cases of missing children or trafficking-related matters. The team will consist of an assistant sub-inspector (ASI) and a couple of constables who will report to the assistant commissioner of police (ACP).