Train paralegals to make them protection officers of trafficking survivors: SC judge

Kolkata, Apr 9 (PTI) Justice UU Lalit of the Supreme Court on Saturday called for training paralegal volunteers to make them protection officers for rescue, security and rehabilitation of trafficked children and women by July 30, the World Day Against Trafficking in Persons.

Speaking at a symposium here on 'Raising Awareness on Human Trafficking and Child Welfare', he said that there are various dimensions to human trafficking in the present world, including that for sexual exploitation, forced labour and organ trade.

Justice Lalit, who is the executive chairman of National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), said that for every case of trafficking, there is a source, a transit area and a destination.

Trafficking can be arrested and protection can be given to victims in any of these three areas, he said.

The kind of dimensions that can be looked forward to for stopping trafficking in persons are prevention, protection, rehabilitation and prosecution of the wrongdoer, he said.

July 30 is recognised as the world day to stop trafficking in human beings, and the country is still four months away from that, Justice Lalit said.

"If we start in right earnest, then in the next four months all that we can achieve at this juncture is to train all our paralegal volunteers to work as protection assistants, maybe the same assistants can thereafter be absorbed as protection officers so that there is a huge team of workers who can try to achieve the gigantic task," he said. Under the Juvenile Justice Act, there is an office called the protection officer which is supposed to be the nodal point where protection to a victim can be assured and the future of the child can be secured, Justice Lalit said.

"Today is Ashtami, which is supposed to be the day when we conquered our enemies and this (trafficking in persons) is the enemy of the society, let us resolve that in the next four months every paralegal volunteer working under our network is equipped and educated to deal with these problems," he said.

Stating that there is a large team of paralegal volunteers, Justice Lalit said that some of them can be turned into protection assistants who can work in tandem with the protection officers and who will be always on watch and guard and try to identify the victims and get them out of that dragnet.

"I have been having sessions with the Ministry for Women and Child Development and we want to have such nodal points where there can be nodal officers who will be in touch with the society and can work as interconnection between the government machinery and the victims," he said.

Holding that countries are yet to develop effective measures for stopping human trafficking, Supreme Court judge Justice Aniruddha Bose said that the freezing to death of a four-member family from Gujarat at the Canada-US border in January this year is a case in point.

"Jurisprudence that is developing in this field is mainly focussed on rehabilitation.... many victims of human trafficking were earlier branded as accused," he said.

Calcutta High Court Chief Justice Prakash Shrivastava said that West Bengal is the source and transit point of human trafficking to places such as Mumbai, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Pune and also to Arab countries.

He said that South 24 Parganas, Nadia, Murshidabad, Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling, Malda, Coochbehar and Dakshin Dinajpur are the most trafficking-prone areas in West Bengal.

"Demand for trafficking is generally for prostitution, forced labour, bonded labour, smuggling and forced marriage," he said, adding that the main target of human traffickers is women and children.

He said that adequate rescue and rehabilitation measures are required to bring the victims back to the mainstream with the help of child welfare centres, legal aid community and NGOs. PTI AMR SOM SOM