Punjab has maximum cases of human trafficking: EAM in RS
Jaishankar said the Punjab government has constituted an SIT and a fact-finding committee to look into cases of human trafficking.
External affairs minister S Jaishankar on Thursday told the Rajya Sabha that Punjab has the maximum number of human trafficking cases in the country.
“As far as states are concerned, the maximum number of trafficking cases is from the state of Punjab,” the minister said while replying to supplementaries during the question hour.
Jaishankar said the Punjab government has constituted an SIT and a fact-finding committee to look into cases of human trafficking.
“As per information given by them to us, 25 FIRs have been registered against 58 illegal travel agents, and 16 accused have been arrested,” he said on Punjab.
“In the case of state of Haryana, 2,325 cases have been registered and 44 FIRs have been registered and 27 people have been arrested. Also, one significant trafficker has been arrested by the state of Gujarat,” he said.
The US has deported 3,258 Indian nationals so far this year, the highest number in the past 16 years, with the total number of people deported since 2009 touching 18,822, according to figures provided by the government. The government has engaged US authorities to ensure people being deported are not ill-treated and that women and children on deportation flights are not restrained with handcuffs and chains, external affairs minister S Jaishankar said. A protest was lodged with the US after 73-year-old Harjit Kaur was maltreated before her deportation in September, he said,
Indian authorities, both at the Central and state levels, have taken action against illegal recruitment agencies and travel agents involved in human trafficking, and the National Investigation Agency (NIA) has investigated 27 human trafficking cases and arrested 169 people, Jaishankar said. NIA, which has set up an anti-human trafficking division, arrested “two important traffickers” in Haryana and Punjab this year.
Of 3,258 Indian nationals deported between January and November 28, 2,032 were sent back on regular commercial flights, and 1,226 on charter flights operated by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection. The number was the highest since 2009, when 734 Indians were deported from the US. The figure rose to 1,303 in 2016 and to 2,042 in 2019.
