Drive to curb child trafficking stuck in rules traffic in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: With the city police last month proposing a DNA testing drive on beggars at traffic signals, it seemed they were finally set to crack down on child trafficking. Instead, they have run into a stop light.

Several hundred children go missing in Bengaluru every year, only a few ever being found. If any of them had landed in the nets of the city's begging mafia, there was no way to establish that. Until, it seemed, the police came up with its idea to subject the scores of children begging at traffic lights and the women claiming to be their mothers to DNA tests. Then the Department of Women and Child Development (DWCD) got involved, raising some pertinent questions and laying down procedures that have perplexed the police.

Police say the department, which is primarily tasked with securing the welfare of women and children, has issued stringent guidelines on how they should go about the proposed drive, which in clude deploying ambulances at every signal, involving non-profits and using private vehicles.

"The drive is necessary because a lot of child trafficking cases are reported from the city. That is why we want to go all out with this," additional commissioner of police (East) P Harishekaran told ET.“But (we have) constraints in hiring private vehicles."

DWCD deputy director Narmada Anand said the department has asked the police for more information. “We want to know where they plan to keep children after the drive. Also, there is no provision for us to transfer funds directly to the police,“ she said.

Anand added that if a DNA test was required to trace trafficked children, there was a legal provision for it and the health department can conduct the tests.

To be sure, not all trafficked children land up begging. Many are forced into bonded labour and even prostitution, some being sold by their parents or guardians.

Advocate BV Vidyulatha, a representative of the Karnataka High Court's Legal Services Committee that filed a public interest litigation (PIL) against women and child trafficking, said that with the number of child-missing cases increasing, the police or DWCD should go ahead with the proposed DNA tests.