GUWAHATI, March 18 - A minor girl from Assam is among the eight girls rescued from New Delhi today by the Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) and other stakeholders. The minor girl, who hails from Sonitpur district, was rescued from the house of a Delhi High Court lawyer in New Delhi.
Meanwhile, family members of five more such trafficked girls from Assam are camping in New Delhi in search of their wards, Rakesh Senger of BBA told The Assam Tribune.
Along with the girl from Assam, seven more underage girls who were trafficked from different states including Odisha, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Bihar were also rescued.
The rescue team also included labour department officials and police personnel.
These girls had been sourced by the employers from an illegal placement agency that accepted payments on their behalf. Some of the victims told the rescue team that they were made to work for nearly 15 hours a day and were seldom given the opportunity to talk to their family back home.
While FIRs have been lodged against the offenders under relevant provisions of the law, the girls have been sent to Sanskar Ashram in Dilshad Garden in the national capital till further rehabilitation.
�The employers of these domestic helps are highly educated. But they neither care for the law nor do they feel pity for the minor girls working for them without payment for years,� said BBA chairperson RS Chaurasia. �This is sheer non-implementation of the September, 2014 executive order by the Lt Governor on regulation of placement agencies. Most of the placement agencies are not registered under law and are a serious cause of rampant child trafficking in Delhi.�
The entire rescue operation started after one Sevati Devi from Rourkela district of Odisha came to Delhi looking for her 15-year-old daughter Anjali (name changed). Anjali had been trafficked out of Odisha in October 2014. Since then, Sevati Devi had no information about her daughter�s whereabouts, and no means of reaching her except a phone number of a placement agent who had taken her.
Sevati Devi approached the BBA on March 17 to help find her daughter. The next day itself, on March 18, BBA�s victim assistance team along with labour department officials and police personnel identified the errant placement agent, who ran his illegal agency from Shakurpur in northwest Delhi. He was forced to reveal the location of Anjali, who was thereafter rescued from her domestic employer in Dwarka of the national capital.
