Religious institutions to come under scanner of immoral trafficking

The government has decided to include inducement of humans for ‘religious’ and ‘social nature’ as cases of trafficking under the proposed amendments in the ITPA, reports Chetan Chauhan.

Updated on: May 11, 2007, 05:19:04 IST

None | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Oscar nominated Hindi movie Water’s sad story of centuries-old tradition of widowed Indian women being pushed into prostitution in the name of religion would be a crime in modern India. The police would be able to book perpetrators of such acts under the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act (ITPA), 1956.

The government has decided to include inducement of humans for ‘religious’ and ‘social nature’ as cases of trafficking under the proposed amendments in the ITPA. The amendments are likely to be introduced in monsoon session of Parliament. “A note is ready for Cabinet consideration,” a Women and Child Development ministry official said.

The WCD ministry has accepted the suggestion of Parliamentary Standing Committee in this regard. The committee was told that caste and religion based prostitution was rampant in the country and this route was being ‘clandestinely’ used to traffic the girls into prostitution. “The definition of trafficking should be redrafted to prevent cases of trafficking driven by religious and social beliefs,” the committee recommended.

Although witnessed before the committee gave several examples of religion-based prostitution, the committee mentioned one such tradition Devadasis, termed as servants of God. As per tradition, girls at an age of 3 are married to a deity or a temple and have to serve God their entire life.

In modern India, the tradition has been associated with commercial sexual exploitation and has even been admitted in a report of National Human Rights Commission. “After initiation as devadasis, women migrate either to nearby towns or far-off cities to practice prositution,” the report said. The study recorded that 45.9 per cent of devadasis in a district in Andhra Pradesh were found to be prostitutes. Even though devadasis have been declared illegal by governments of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, NHRC had found the practice to be prevalent in 14 and 10 districts of the two states, respectively.

However, ministry officials told HT the proposed amendment would cover tribal communities and all religious organisations including some religious gurus against whom complaints of forcing disciplines into prostitution have been received. Till now, the Act covered trafficking for the purpose of commercial sex work and is defined as sale of organs, sale of humans for sexual abuse and sale of humans for slavery.

Ranjana Kumari, Director of Institute for Social Research, who made a presentation before the standing committee, said the new provision would curb practices of tribes like Bedia, where the parents use their daughters for financial gains through prostitution. However, the provision will not cover practices like polyandry, where women are married to more than one man.

The ministry has also accepted the recommendation of the committee to enhance the punishment for child trafficking from seven to ten years in case of first offence and life imprisonment in case of second offence. Another recommendation that cases of trafficking would be investigated by an inspector level official has also been agreed.

Email author: chetan@hindustantimes.com

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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