Janjivan Bureau / New Delhi : The Delhi Commission for Women has busted a major human trafficking racket with the rescue of 39 Nepalese women and girls from hotel Hriday Inn in Paharganj area, making it the third such raid in the national capital in a week.
The dawn raid carried out by the women’s panel with the help of the police based on a tip-off by an NGO prompted an agitated DCW chief Swati Maliwal to call Delhi the “human trafficking capital”.
Pointing out that hotels in Paharganj have become a hub of human trafficking, Maliwal urged Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh to urgently hold a meeting of the Delhi L-G, police commissioner and DCW on the issue and fix responsibility of the police.
“After being known for rapes Delhi is moving towards becoming the human trafficking capital. A huge trafficking racket busted. The rescue of 73 trafficking survivors in a week points out at a big trafficking ring operating from Delhi. But the police don’t get to know anything about it. Woman commission and women are endangering their life, but the police fail to take action,” said the DCW chairperson who led the rescue exercise early in the morning.
Maliwal wonders about the beat constables being unaware of such illegal activities in the areas under their purview saying this raises many questions regarding their “complicity” and if they are being paid for letting the rackets operate.
The DCW chief said after a tip-off received from an NGO around 1 am the commission’s team called the police with whose support 39 girls and women, all Nepalese and trafficked into Delhi from the earthquake-hit areas of Nepal on the pretext of jobs, were rescued.
Maliwal said the raid lasted the entire night and assistance was provided by the police. The trafficked victims were to be sold to Gulf countries while some had already been trafficked to Sri Lanka, she noted.
Usually girls from Nepal’s quake-affected areas are trafficked and sold to gulf countries and Sri Lanka, said Maliwal, thus indicating the vulnerability of Nepalese women and girls to the traps laid by international trafficking rings operating at a massively organised level.
