But within minutes of setting their foot on the City, traffickers swoop down on them. Painting a scene of hope, the traffickers lure away these children back into the world of drudgery and more misery.

The City's railway stations and bus stands are the abodes of this body shopping of the most venal kind. A child can be bought here for as low as Rs 150. From the marketplace, these children are straightaway routed into beggary, hotel industry and prostitution.

Metrolife ventured into the City's bus stands, railways stations and the Kalasipalya lorry stand, to get a first hand experience of how trafficking in migrant children goes on with impunity. Traffickers, mostly young men, are on prowl through the day looking for their quarry, which they pick with uncanny ability. Children coming into the City from Shimoga, Kadur, Pavagada, Dharwad, Davanagere, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are easy pickings for these traffickers.

At KSRTC main bus stand, Metrolife was witness to the seamier side of the Silicon City at 11 am recently. A haggard looking boy arrived in a bus from somewhere in Andhra Pradesh.

Looking lost and hungry and clad in shabby clothes, the boy appeared to be alone for sure. He looked around and sat on a bench by the side of the bus stand. Fifteen minutes later, a young man clad in a T-shirt and pants walked up to him and started making a conversation.

After some enquiries on where the boy was from, the youth straight away got down to business. He promised to find the boy a suitable place that will provide him good food, shelter and money at the end of the month. The boy's face lit up and within minutes walking out of the bus stand in the company of the youth.

Traffickers are usually well connected with the local underworld and lower echelons of the police. They are usually drunk to the brim or are on dope most of the day. "The peak hours when the traffickers whisk away children are between 5:30 am and 9 am and 7 pm and 10 pm," says a source at the KSRTC bus stand.

The trafficker is usually a middleman for hotels on lookout for boys. He could even be a middleman providing young girls and boys to prostitution rackets.

A hotel usually pays a middleman Rs 500 to Rs 1000 for every boy supplied. The charges for providing children to sex industry is on the higher side, range as they between Rs 5000 to Rs 15,000. These boys and girls are then sold off to red light areas in Mumbai at double the price.

There are three categories of children that form the chunk of migrant children arriving in the City. Those who runaway from home because of some petty fights, children of a drunken father or mother and those children who come with families to the City to beg.

Setting them up

The traffickers are desperados on look out for money. If they fail to get a child on any day, they set up a child that they had already put in some place.

They help these boys run away from the hotel that has employed them and sell them to some other hotel. The money is now shared between the trafficker and the boy, who is obviously learning the tricks of the trade. It is not long before the child himself grows into another trafficker in this vicious circle.

Alongside the traffickers, operate rescuers as well. There are more than 20 volunteers from three or four NGOs in the City that work to rescue these children from the traffickers.

"We are located at bus stands, railways stations and lorry stands in the City. If a migrant child is not spotted and removed from the spot within 10 minutes, he or she would be taken away by traffickers. Sometimes the traffickers are so well linked that we have to simply turn a blind eye to the traffickers and let the child go," says a member of a prominent rescue team in the City.

According to Ramaswamy, coordinator with BOSCO, this year about 629 children were rescued between June and November and in November alone till date the number of rescued children stands at 17. Close to 50 children are rescued a month from bus stands alone.

The number of rescued children doubles at railway stations and lorry stands in the City, he says. 

The number of trafficked children is hard to calculate but according to the rescuers the estimate of trafficked children almost doubles the estimate of those rescued a month.