SEX TRAFFICKING IN INDIA: THE LEGAL PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

“Woman’s degradation is in man’s idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man.” – Elizabeth Cady Stanton.

Sex trafficking and commercial prostitution is an organized crime based on this, women are at the beck and call of men as sex slaves. Preventing such a heinous crime is an objective that cuts across geographical, racial and religious boundaries.

United Nations in the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, especially Women and Children also referred to as the Trafficking Protocol or the Palermo Protocol defines trafficking as –

“ the recruitment, transportation, transfer, harbouring or receipt of persons, by means of threat or use of force or other forms of coercion, of abduction, of fraud, of deception, of the abuse of power or of a position of vulnerability or of the giving or receiving of payments or benefits to achieve the consent of a person having control over another person, for the purpose of exploitation. Exploitation shall include, at a minimum, the exploitation of the prostitution of others or other forms of sexual exploitation, forced labour or services, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude or the removal, manipulation or implantation of organs”;[1]

[1](2017) <http://www.jgu.edu.in/chlet/pdf/Indias-Human-Trafficking-Laws-Report-Book_Feb-2015.pdf> accessed 19 July 2017.