Women and girls were trafficked within the country for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation and forced marriage, especially in those areas where the sex ratio is highly skewed in favour of men.
Indian migrants who migrated willingly every year to the Middle East and Europe for work as domestic servants and low-skilled labourers may also have ended up part of the human trafficking industry.
In such cases, workers may have been 'recruited' by way of fraudulent recruitment practices that led them directly into situations of forced labour, including debt bondage; in other cases, high debts incurred to pay recruitment fees left them vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous employers in the destination countries, where some were subjected to conditions of involuntary servitude, including non-payment of wages, restrictions on movement, unlawful withholding of passports, and physical or sexual abuse.
[7] In 2023, the Organised Crime Index gave the country a score of 8 out of 10 for human trafficking, noting porous borders with Nepal and Bangladesh.
[citation needed] As adults they use personal relationships and trust in their villages of origin[dubious – discuss] to recruit additional girls.
India's Central Bureau of Investigation incorporated anti-trafficking training, by Dr. Gilly McKenzie of the Interpol Trafficking and Organised Crime Division, into its standard curriculum.
Although children trafficked for forced labour may be housed in government shelters and are entitled to₹ 20,000 ($370), the quality of many of these homes remains poor and the disbursement of rehabilitation funds is sporadic.
The central government does not provide protection services to Indian victims trafficked abroad for forced labour or commercial sexual exploitation.
NGOs report that some Bengali victims of commercial sexual exploitation are pushed back across the border without protection services.
[1] The Government of India launched an anti human trafficking web portal in February 2014 that they hope will be an effective way for interested parties to share information about this topic.
[11] As the Commissioner of Police for Rachakonda, Telangana, Bhagwat led numerous anti-trafficking operations, resulting in the rescue of hundreds of victims from forced labor and sexual exploitation.
[12] His innovative use of legal provisions to close sites associated with human trafficking and his dedication to making anti-trafficking a priority in Telangana have been widely recognized.
[13] The Salvation Army has a program that provides safe places for children of women who work in the red district in India.