The petitioners were accused of illegally adopting or procuring the children from alleged touts. On July 9 last year, the children were produced before the CWC in Mumbai and have since been in the custody of specialised adoption agencies

A possible boom in trafficking of minor children is worrying the agencies as Delhi-NCR has reportedly become a hub of the trafficked kids.

Although Agra SSP Bablu Kumar has said “prima facie the BJP leader knew what was happening”, the politician has claimed the Agra police is trying to frame him.

Geeta Arora, alias Sonu Punjaban has been sentenced to jail for 24 years by the Dwarka court in Delhi for her involvement in the kidnapping, human trafficking and prostitution. She has also be fined Rs 64,000.

A study by academicians from Yale School of Medicine and Harvard Medical School which says Indians are at a much lower risk of getting COVID-19 if red light areas shut after the lockdown has come under a scanner from concerned decision-makers, academics, activists, representatives of sex worker collectives, various advocacy groups within the sex workers’ community and women’s rights groups for making scapegoats of sex workers and blaming them for the spread of COVID-19.

In the July 6 advisory, the Ministry of Home Affairs advised the states and UTs to immediately set up new Anti-Human Trafficking Units and upgrade the infrastructure of the existing units in all districts with the financial assistance provided by the Centre.

“Ab to dus rupaye wala customer bhi chalega, kam se kam chai aur pav to khane ko milenge is lockdown mein (Now, even a customer who can pay ten rupees will do. It can get me some chai and bread at least during this lockdown),” says Beauty Biswas, a sex worker at Kamathipura, Mumbai’s notorious red light district, located virtually at the centre of the city.

About 700 km from the national capital in Uttar Pradesh’s Bundelkhand region is Chitrakoot. Here, minor girls from poor tribal families are forced to trade off their bodies in exchange for their meagre wages.

Saturdays at the children’s home in Dongri were meant for meetings with parents. Similarly, children in custodial care institutions could meet their mothers lodged in jails once in a fortnight for an hour within jail premises. However, the lockdown changed all that.