11 pc increase in human trafficking

Cases of trafficking of girls are increasing year after year with 2015 alone showing an 11 per cent rise even as investigators fail to get convictions in more than half of such cases.

This year until October, there were 6,082 cases reported across the country and this number could rise, as several states have not come up with full details of cases.

There is an 11 per cent increase of cases involving human trafficking of girls, including buying and selling of minors for prostitution and trafficking of girls from foreign countries, from last year's figure of 5,466. There were 3,940 cases in 2013 and 3,554 in 2012. This year, Uttar Pradesh tops the list with the bulk of the cases under its belt. It had 2,192 cases until August, while Gujarat with (546 cases until September) and Assam (525 cases until June) take the top spots on the list. Karnataka came fourth with 423 cases until September while last year it had 472 cases.

The most number of cases were under the head of immoral traffic where 4,462 cases were reported this year while there were 1,449 cases of procuring minor girls, according to home ministry’s admission in Parliament last week.

However, one of the main issues is that in 55 per cent of the human trafficking cases in which court trials have been completed, the prosecution fails to get conviction.

Though the figure for 2015 is not available yet, the statistics for 2014 showed that the conviction rate was just 45.1 per cent, though the recent years have shown an increasing trend. While in 2012, the conviction rate was 35.9 per cent, it marginally rose to 36.4 per cent.

Last year,trials were completed in 2,284 cases while the convictions happened only in 1,029 cases. According to statistics, 2,323 people were found guilty of human trafficking as against 1,688 in 2013 and 1,611 in 2012. Officials and activists believe that the problem lies in ground investigations.