NEW DELHI:After three years of abuse by her affluent employers in Gurgaon — who made her sleep in a toilet on their terrace — 13-year-old Manisha (name changed), a tribal girl from Godda, was rescued after her father sent an SOS that triggered a joint operation led by Jharkhand Bhawan’s Integrated Research and Rehabilitation Cell (IRRC). Lodged in a children’s home in Delhi since late Nov, she now waits to return to the village she was taken from at age 10 by a trafficker who promised a better life.Eight-year-old Nisha left Khunti with her parents, unaware she would soon be abandoned on a train with only a mobile phone. Found at Anand Vihar station six months ago, she has been in a children’s home while authorities traced her family. The inquiry led to her grandmother, who is eager to take her back despite her own hardship. Nisha will return once officials finalise a rehabilitation plan and enrol her in a residential school.In Jan, Rashi and 17 other children boarded a train from Ranchi, lured by a woman trafficker who promised a fun trip to Delhi and work to ease their families’ poverty. Before they reached the Capital, an alert from Jharkhand Police led to their rescue at a Delhi station. Four of them — including Rashi — were shown as adults after the trafficker produced birth certificates. With no long-term support for those just above 18, Rashi was sent back to the home she had earlier fled.These cases of girls aged 8 to 18 illustrate a growing pattern— of minors falling prey to unsafe migration routes or organised trafficking networks. Children reported missing in village police stations often resurface in NCR, trapped by placement agencies, intermediaries or employers who treat them as bonded workers. Salaries are diverted to agents posing as relatives, and the girls are denied phones, mobility and contact with their families.On the eve of Women’s Day, TOI visited the IRRC facility run by Jharkhand Bhavan, where case files and counselling reports reveal how traffickers continue to expand their networks despite tighter enforcement. They routinely forge Aadhaar and birth certificates to avoid arrest. Since 2015, the IRRC has restored 1,077 Jharkhand children to their families or to institutional care in tribal districts. Nodal officer Nachiketa said that in the current financial year (2025-26), 122 children have been returned so far. Of all repatriations since inception, 98% are girls. Each year, 20–25 children from other source states such as Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Assam and Nepal are also rescued. Most rescues take place across NCR — Gurgaon, Faridabad, Noida and Ghaziabad — though teams have travelled to UP, Haryana, Punjab and even Telangana, where six children were recently recovered from a biscuit factory.
Working out of a facility in Vasant Kunj, the team keeps a ready space for children brought directly from households before they are escorted to their villages. The 24×7 unit responds to calls from district administrations, police and citizens on its helpline 10582.“Case after case shows that social vulnerabilities push children into trafficking,” Nachiketa said. “It’s not just poverty — single-parent homes, children left with siblings while parents migrate for work, or families where survival needs overshadow childcare make them easy targets.” The trafficking chain, she said, is layered to avoid detection. Each trafficker through the chain of intermediaries from the stage of acquiring the child to placing the child through agents in a home as a househelp probably makes around Rs 1 lakh from one child over a year,” she added. “The children get nothing—their wages go to traffickers, they have no phones, no freedom, and are kept like bonded labour,” Nachiketa said.After restoration, the IRRC monitors each child for three months, ensuring access to schooling, skilling and state-sponsored support. But girls who turn 18 before or during repatriation often fall through systemic gaps. “We need support beyond shelter homes for young women who are legally adults but still extremely vulnerable,” Nachiketa said.The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, in its 2018 SOP on repatriation of trafficked children, acknowledged the central role state bhawans can play in Delhi-NCR rescues — a responsibility Jharkhand Bhawan has carried out since 2015.For the IRRC team, Women’s Day brings no pause. “For us, these cases aren’t numbers,” Nachiketa said. “Each rescue is a life reclaimed — a step towards empowering a girl and her family against the trafficking network.”
