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Child Rights – POSCO, Child Labour Laws, NAPC, etc.

Child trafficking a deeply disturbing reality, says SC

Explained | Polity | Mains Paper 2: Indian Constitution - historical underpinnings, evolution, features, amendments, significant provisions and basic structure

Why in the News

The Supreme Court, while upholding a conviction under the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956, described child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation as a “deeply disturbing reality” in India. 

Introduction

Child trafficking in India operates through organised, layered networks involving recruitment, transportation, harbouring, and exploitation. Despite statutory safeguards, judicial approaches have often been inconsistent in appreciating the lived realities of trafficked minors. The present judgment marks a reaffirmation of victim-centric adjudication, recognising the socio-economic vulnerability of trafficked children and the need for heightened judicial sensitivity while recording and assessing their evidence.

What is child trafficking?

  • Child trafficking involves the use of children for the purpose of exploitation in various ways. It is a serious crime and a severe violation of human rights.
  • It is irrelevant whether a child appears to have “consented” in some way to being exploited, especially when force, deception, coercion, or abuse of power or vulnerability are being used.

What are the most common forms of child trafficking?

Vulnerable children may be exposed to many different forms of exploitation, including:

  1. Sexual exploitation: this can include abusing children for commercial sexual exploitation or the production of child sexual abuse material
  2. Forced labour: when children work under harsh conditions in various sectors, including agriculture, factories, mining or as domestic workers
  3. Begging and petty crimes: putting children to beg on streets or commit other crimes, such as theft.
  4. Children in armed conflict: children are recruited as fighters, sexually exploited, or kept in domestic servitude during a conflict
  5. Child marriage: girls are married off to third parties for money or social status, often as part of harmful traditional practices.
  6. Illegal adoption: Trafficking babies and children for illegal adoption for their exploitation, often through deception or coercion of their parents or guardians.

Judicial Recognition of Child Trafficking as Organised Crime

  1. Organised criminal networks: Operate through complex and layered structures across recruitment, transport, harbouring, and exploitation.
  2. Diffused criminal processes: Fragmented operations make it difficult for victims to narrate events with precision or linear clarity.
  3. Systemic deception: Victims are often misled, coerced, or psychologically conditioned, undermining expectations of consistent testimony.

Evidentiary Value of a Trafficked Child’s Testimony

  1. Sole testimony sufficiency: Conviction can rest entirely on the testimony of the victim if it is credible and convincing.
  2. Minor inconsistencies: Cannot be grounds for disbelieving a trafficked child’s evidence.
  3. Injured witness principle: Testimony of a trafficked minor carries the same evidentiary weight as that of an injured witness.

Judicial Sensitivity in Recording Evidence

  1. Secondary victimisation: Courts must avoid processes that re-traumatise victims during trial.
  2. Sensitive appreciation: Judicial assessment must account for trauma, fear, confinement, and prolonged exploitation.
  3. Prompt protest fallacy: Victims should not be faulted for failure to immediately resist or report exploitation.

Recognition of Socio-Economic and Cultural Vulnerability

  1. Marginalised backgrounds: Courts must consider inherent socio-economic and cultural vulnerability of trafficked minors.
  2. Structural disadvantage: Poverty, social backwardness, and gendered exploitation heighten susceptibility to trafficking.
  3. Constitutional obligation: The State bears a duty to protect children from moral and material abandonment.

Rejection of Stereotypical Reasoning in Criminal Trials

  1. Improbability arguments: Courts must not discard testimony as “against ordinary human conduct”.
  2. Contextual realism: Judicial reasoning must reflect the lived realities of trafficked victims rather than abstract behavioural norms.
  3. Credibility assessment: Must be grounded in circumstances of confinement, coercion, and power asymmetry.

Statutory and Constitutional Anchoring of the Judgment

  1. Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act: Upholds convictions based on victim testimony.
  2. Article 21: Reinforces protection of dignity and bodily integrity.
  3. Child protection jurisprudence: Aligns with constitutional morality and substantive justice.

Conclusion

The Supreme Court’s ruling reinforces a shift from procedural formalism to substantive justice in child trafficking cases. By recognising trafficked children as injured witnesses and accounting for their socio-economic vulnerability and trauma, the judgment aligns criminal adjudication with constitutional morality under Articles 21 and 23. It strengthens victim-centric justice and reaffirms the judiciary’s role in protecting vulnerable sections from secondary victimisation.

Measures Taken to Prohibit Child Trafficking

Legal Measures

  1. Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, 1956: Criminalises trafficking, brothel-keeping and exploitation for prostitution.
  2. Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015: Provides for rescue, rehabilitation and reintegration of trafficked children.
  3. Indian Penal Code provisions: Sections 370 and 370A specifically criminalise trafficking and exploitation.
  4. POCSO Act, 2012: Addresses sexual exploitation and abuse of children with child-friendly trial procedures.

Institutional and Administrative Measures

  1. Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs): Specialised units at district level for prevention, rescue and investigation.
  2. Child Welfare Committees (CWCs): Statutory bodies for care, protection and rehabilitation of rescued children.
  3. Integrated Child Protection Services (ICPS): Provides shelter, counselling, legal aid and rehabilitation support.
  4. Inter-State coordination mechanisms: Address cross-border and inter-state trafficking networks.

Judicial Interventions

  1. Fast-track trials: Courts emphasise expeditious disposal of trafficking cases to reduce victim trauma.
  2. Victim-centric approach: Judicial insistence on sensitivity in recording testimony and evaluating evidence.

Time-Bound Justice: Pinki v. State of Uttar Pradesh

  1. Judicial directive: The Supreme Court directed all High Courts to ensure that trials relating to child trafficking are completed within six months.
  2. Rationale: Prevents prolonged trauma, secondary victimisation and witness intimidation.
  3. Significance: Reinforces access to justice as a substantive right for trafficked children, not merely a procedural formality.

Relevant Constitutional Provisions

  1. Article 21: Right to Life with Dignity: Guarantees protection against exploitation and mandates trauma-sensitive justice delivery.
  2. Article 23: Prohibition of Trafficking: Explicitly bans trafficking in human beings and forced labour.
  3. Article 39(e): Protection of Workers: Directs the State to prevent abuse of children due to economic necessity.
  4. Article 39(f): Child Welfare: Mandates conditions ensuring children’s healthy development, freedom and dignity.

PYQ Relevance

[UPSC 2023] Development and welfare schemes for the vulnerable, by its nature, are discriminatory in approach. Do you agree? Give reasons for your answer.

Linkage: The Supreme Court explicitly recognizes special evidentiary treatment for trafficked children based on socio-economic and cultural vulnerability. Hence, it constitutionally justified differential protection rather than formal equality.

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