A joint team of Rajasthan government officials and activists of an NGO rescued 18 children from bangle manufacturing units Bhatta Basti here today.
Two employers, whose identities were not disclosed, were also arrested in the course of the raid-and-rescue mission in which personnel of the Rajasthan police, the local Anti-Human Trafficking Unit, the labour department and activists of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA) took part. The bangle manufacturing units were, however, not sealed.
While all of the rescued children were from Jharkhand, most of them hail from Chatra district from where they are suspected to have been trafficked. The children, aged between 7 and 14, would live in the very units that they worked in. Rajasthan government officials said that the children’s living conditions poor and many of them were paid less than the amount they had been paid between a year and a year-and-a-half, when they were allegedly trafficked and pushed to work in the bangle making units.
While officials were ascertaining other facts related to the alleged trafficking of the children, it was learnt that cases under different provisions of the 2015 Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection) Act, the 1986 Abolition of Child Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1976 Bonded Labour (System) Abolition Act and the Indian Penal Code, including Section 370.
