40 Bihar child labourers return home from Rajasthan

JAIPUR: The 40 children from Bihar, who were rescued in Rajasthan last month, have been sent back home after their parents were contacted.
While officials had previously found that the parents were given around Rs 4,000 for each child, the former claimed that they sent the children with the assurance that the minors would be sent to school. The children were supposed to work in bangle factories in Jaipur and had boarded the train from Patna.
Rajasthan state commission for protection of child rights (RSCPCR) chairperson Sangeeta Beniwal told TOI, “The children were kept in quarantine while we got in touch with the parents. However, the parents told the child welfare committee that they sent the children under the assumption that the boys would be sent to school and taken care of. Even the children claimed that they boarded the train willingly, though it was found that they were to work in bangle making industry.”
Officials could not verify if it was a single individual or a group of persons who actually bought the children from the parents in exchange for money.
The boys, aged between 8-15 years, were travelling in a passenger train and were accommodated at the government-run shelter in Jaipur till they returned home.
In the past two years, approximately 3,000 children have been rescued from labour in Rajasthan out of which majority have been boys and over 1,000 persons have been arrested since 2019. Close to 1,000 rescued children hailed from states outside Rajasthan and were brought here under various pretext to work in hotels, factories and other forms of employment and experts claimed that majority of children were brought from Bihar. Last month also more than half a dozen children were rescued in separate incidents in Udaipur and experts working in this field claimed with the lockdown restrictions eased, more cases of child trafficking are likely.