Almost every day, a Bihar kid gets rescued from the clutches of traffickers: NCRB

A high incidence of child trafficking has been reported from Bihar in the latest National Crime Records Bureau Report which puts the rate, at over one per day, among the highest in the country. Asked about measures taken to rehabilitate a rescued child, the ADGP, who counts "poverty and illiteracy" as the two primary factors responsible for child trafficking, said "the state's labour and social welfare departments have come out with a slew of schemes specifically for such juveniles". Moreover, the state also has in place a "Child Labour Tracking System" which keeps a track of a rescued child till he/she attains 18 years of age. However, Suresh Kumar, who runs a Patna-based NGO Centre Direct rues that "poverty, involvement of huge money and weaknesses in prosecution" have contributed to child trafficking becoming a huge problem in the state. Kumar, who claims to have been involved in rehabilitation of more than 500 children rescued from Jaipur since 2014, added "the prosecution is very weak in cases of human trafficking because cases are of inter-state nature and there is no mechanism for coordination among the states to deal with such cases and hence traffickers often get away with impunity".