Assamese children rescued by an NGO and Mumbai police
Earlier this month, 40 children were rescued from a Mumbai fish canning factory by a local NGO.
All of the children, 36 girls and 4 boys, had been reportedly trafficked from Assam. Working for 14 hours a day at a stretch with no food, the children were paid around 7,000 rupees a month.
Back home, the children have been in a state of shock since and have refused to speak up.
These children are however not alone. They are among the thousands of children who are reportedly trafficked from Assam to metros and other parts of India.
The Northeast's largest state is sitting on human trafficking time bomb, with more than 4000 children reported missing in the last 5 years. A combination of floods, disasters and ethnic violence has made the region a hot-bed for traffickers.
These traffickers often sell children to placement agencies in the metros. This is how the 40 children had ended up in the canning factory in Mumbai.
At least 4,219 children have gone missing from Assam in the last five years. Of the untraced children, some 2,718 are female and 1,501 male.
In 2012 alone, 797 female and 357 male children went missing. According to CID sources, in Assam 422 victims of human trafficking, most of the minors, have been rescued since 2011.
Among those who were rescued from traffickers between 2011 and 2013, at least 223 were below 18 years. The cops have arrested 281 middlemen since 2011, but the conviction rate in anti-trafficking cases in Assam is an abysmal 2 percent.
Assam has been undergoing a massive shift in livelihood pattern. With rural families losing land and livelihood to a repeated cycle of flood and erosion, children are being sent away to earn money.
The impact of trafficking has been harder on girls. Around half of the girls trafficked from Assam are estimated to end up in brothels in the metros.
Around 10 women are abducted in Assam on a daily basis, and most of them become victims of trafficking.
Since 2013, 2,740 women have been kidnapped in Assam since January 2013. All of them un-traced.