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Domestic help: how trafficking takes place?
Published on Sun, Sep 02, 2007 at 22:24 in 
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NO MERCY: Supplying child labourers as domestic workers is big business for agencies in Delhi.
Chattisgarh: Young girls being brought to delhi, being forced to conceive, their babies being sold to prospective buyers.
Sita Minj can't hold back her tears. Her 11-year-old son Bikram was taken by an agent took him to Delhi as a domestic servant. Today all they have is a visiting card of the agency.
Bikram's father says, “When I tried to call on the phone numbers I had been given they said my son is not there.”
Ghursai Lakda's 8-year-old daughter is also missing.
Ghursai says, “The agent took my daughter later he threatened me that if I register a complaint with the police, I will not be able to see my daughter ever again.”
The list available with CNN-IBN shows that over 700 children are missing from Sarguja district in Chattisgarh. And this village, Cheerapara, is missing no less than 64 of its children.
It is from poverty stricken tribal villages that young girls are duped by agents and taken to metro cities to work in high profile houses as domestic maid servants.
Father Theodore Lakda runs Aasha Association, an NGO, which rescues child workers trafficking from Chattisgarh.
Theodore says, “20-30 per cent of those who leave never return.”
Fourteen-year-old Snehlata was one of the lucky few who returned.
Snehlata says, “I did not get any money. I was not allowed to meet my parents when they tried to bring me back.”
Snehlata was beaten, harassed and made to work for almost 18 hours a day.
“Once he beat me so much that my ear was swollen. I can't hear properly ever since, Snehlata adds.
Supplying child labourers as domestic workers is big business for agencies in Delhi. Young tribals work as agents for these agencies and are paid to supply children to them.
The agencies keep no records and the parents rarely go to the police. How then will the ban on domestic child labour be implemented?
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What is the Women and Childrens minister Renuka Chaudhary doing. Its easy to have innocent husbands and aged parents arrested..and
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Dear IBN team: You have become the voice of the voiceless, I salute you on India's 60th year of Independence!
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