In 2007, the district of Supaul in Bihar was completely inundated, as heavy rainfall in the catchment area of Nepal had caused massive flooding, forcing residents to seek shelter in relief camps. I had gone to Supaul by road to report on the floods for a national daily. Families were distraught, with members of one family often being forced to find accommodation in different relief camps. The elderly and young children were the worst affected. On my way back, I stopped to have a cup of chai at the closest railway station, which was Saharsa Junction. At the station, I saw a middle-aged man leading four young girls between the ages of ten and twelve to the bogey of a stationary train. Something seemed amiss, but I made light of what I had witnessed, as I needed to get back to Patna by the evening.
I subsequently learnt that a large number of children had been trafficked from and around Supaul during this period. Traffickers usually take advantage of families who are facing adversity and economic hardship.
Twelve years later, a group of Delhi-based women journalists was travelling to Damascus via Dubai. As we settled into our seats on the plane, we were followed into the plane by an attractive middle-aged woman from the Northeast, who was escorting three attractive young women, all in their early twenties. “They have come to work in Dubai,” she later told a fellow journalist, refusing to specify their work profile. It was pretty obvious what kind of work the girls would be made to do.
The Northeast has emerged as a key destination from where young girls are being lured into trafficking, with many being picked by handsome young men who appear flushed with money and present themselves as prospective husbands. These “husbands” are little more than conduits who receive a handsome commission on the delivery of these young women to their destinations, which could be Mumbai, Dubai, or Doha.
Trafficking has undergone a sea change in India. No longer do pimps, posing as “uncles”, herd young women into second-class train compartments in order to sell them to brothel owners in North India. Shillong-based lawyer Bariphylla Lyttan, case manager for the Impulse Network NGO, believes, “Traffickers are well-connected and have a lot of money. Since most of their interactions with these women are over social media, it is very difficult to track them down. The girls go willingly with them. These agents take different routes each time they come to the Northeast. They also seem to be aware of the modus operandi of the NGOs working in this field and outsmart both us and the police. It has become very difficult to find survivors who will speak out against them. It is also difficult to get a figure as to how many girls are being trafficked.”
Other states like Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh have witnessed a rise in trafficking. The pimps may not be as suave as those visiting the Northeast, but there is little doubt that they too have devised sophisticated methods to outwit the police.
A recent newspaper report in a national daily touched the tip of the iceberg. The report highlighted how between January 1 and 15, 2026, a total of 807 people went missing from the national capital. On average, 54 people were missing every day from Delhi. Of these, 509 were women and girls, and 298 were men. This information had been released by the Delhi police, who reported that 191 of those missing during this fateful fortnight were minors. Thirteen went missing every day. Sadly, 146 of these minors were girls. While the police did manage to trace some of the missing children, 71 per cent remained untraced.
The police report added that in 2025, a total of 24,508 people were reported missing in Delhi, with women accounting for over 60 per cent of the cases at 14,870. Men accounted for 9,638 cases. The police managed to trace 15,421 individuals, but 9,087 cases remained unresolved. This information created such a furore that the top brass of the police denied it a week later.
But statistics speak for themselves. The Global Slavery Index says that the trafficking of humans for commercial sexual exploitation affects eight million men and women in India. Over 1.2 million girls are engaged in child prostitution, according to the Bachpan Bachao Andolan. The government has now come up with new legislation to deal with trafficking called Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), 2023, which came into effect on July 1, 2024, whose key sections of 143 and 144 are the primary provisions for combatting trafficking. The government believes that this new law will offer swift and time-bound relief, rehabilitation, and institutional care for all victims of trafficking. Most importantly, all cases of trafficking forthwith would be investigated by the National Investigation Agency (NIA).
Anti-trafficking and child rights activists wonder how the NIA, whose mandate is to investigate terrorism cases, will cope with this widespread trafficking problem. The NIA is known to be highly understaffed. How, then, is it expected to look into a problem that affects a sizeable segment of India's population?
While the National Crime Records Bureau has still to provide an update on trafficking stats after 2023, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar did provide a breakup of the trafficking arrests made in 2024 in the Rajya Sabha last year. Jaishankar stated that the NIA had investigated 27 human trafficking cases, resulting in 169 arrests and 132 individuals charged. But the traffickers that NIA had focused on were largely illegal travel agents, operating out of Haryana, Punjab, and Gujarat, who were sending young men illegally out of the country on the so-called “dunkey routes”.
Bharti Ali, co-founder of the HAQ Centre for Child Rights, had expressed her reservations with the new trafficking law that was legislated, stating, “We already have laws, be it for trafficking or forced labour or rehabilitation of minors under the Juvenile Justice Act. The ministry should have strengthened these from the anti-trafficking law to the law dealing with child labour.”
Activists question why an anti-terror organisation has been asked to investigate women and child trafficking. The new law denies sex workers bail, and that is a clear assault on their civil liberties.
Shantha Sinha, former chairperson of the National Commission for Child Rights, believes that children, especially adolescent girls, must be tracked from the village level. “This has to be an area-based approach. Schools have to ensure that every child attends school every single day. In the west, the responsibility of ensuring kids do not get into trouble rests with the schools, who, if a child does not attend school for five days in a row, have to do a follow-up with the parents. In our schools, attendance data is being falsified, and this needs to stop,” said Sinha.
The problem with the government is that they have enacted a new trafficking law for children and women without consulting the stakeholders, many of whom have been working in this field for over three decades and more. With the NIA having its hands full, this problem will only further multiply.
Rashme Sehgal is an author and an independent journalist.
