New Delhi: Kailash Satyarthi on Friday won the Nobel Peace Prize for his crusade against child labour in India. CNN-IBN joined Satyarthi's cause and the investigation revealed how thousands of minor girls are trafficked to big cities and sold as bonded labour by illegal placement agencies.
"I will not go back home without my daughter," says a teary-eyed Mamuni, whose daughter went missing two years ago after being trafficked to Delhi on the promise that she would get a lucrative job as a domestic help.
Like Mamuni, hundreds of tea garden workers from Assam are searching for their teenage daughters in Delhi. To trace such girls, CNN-IBN, along with members of NGO Bachpan Bachao Aandolan, joined a police raid at a placement agency in Delhi's Shakurpur Basti.
During the raid, several minor girls were found staying in dingy rooms along with their male agents. Some of the girls were just 7-8 years old.
Among the agents, Mamuni spotted Dolon, the man who brought her daughter to Delhi. On being questioned, he revealed that Mamuni's daughter is working as a domestic maid. "She is at a kothi," he said.
At the police station, Dolon confessed there are many like him trafficking girls from Assam. "I have brought three or four girls so far. I get paid Rs 7000 to 8000 for each girl," he said.
With the information from Dolon, police tracked down Mamuni's child. The mother and daughter were reunited after two years.
The police informed the child's employer, Namrata that she would be booked for hiring a minor girl.
Namrata said that while she paid for the domestic help, it was never to the girl. "Initially the agent takes Rs 30,000-36,000. Then they come every month to collect the maid's salary of Rs 2,800," she said.
Not just extreme poverty in rural India, it is also the demand for cheap domestic labour that is fuelling the child trafficking racket in cities.
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