Anti-trafficking NGO Apne Aap has accused the Bihar police of harassing its members and falsely claiming that several girls of a residential school run by it were forced into the flesh trade.
The NGO, which works in Araria, one of Bihar’s poorest districts, has approached the National Human Rights Commission and National Legal Services Authority seeking protection of its members against alleged police harassment, and a thorough inquiry into the role of Araria superintendent of police Shivdeep W. Lande.
“No recorded student of the Apne Aap-run girls’ hostel has been found in the flesh trade. No student was missing from the Apne Aap KGBV for five years,” said Ruchira Gupta, founder-president of Apne Aap Women Worldwide, a grassroots movement working to end sex trafficking.
The police earlier this month alleged that 10 of the 24 girl students at KGVP were missing for five years, were found to have been pushed into the flesh trade. These girls, the police claimed, were among 25 girls rescued in raids on theatres at a fair in Forbesganj in February. Apne Aap, however, said no such raid was ever conducted by the police. The only girls who had left the hostel in the past five years had been withdrawn by their parents, it added.
Ms Gupta accused Mr Lande of falsely adding the names of two Apne Aap staffers, Soumya Pratheek and Manish Swarnkar, to an FIR filed in February following the alleged raid, and then arresting Mohammad Kalam, the NGO’s prime investigator. She also accused the police of wrongly picking up a 14-year-old daughter of an Apne Aap staffer from her home at midnight.
Mr Kalam secured bail as soon as he was produced in court, but only after five traumatic days in jail. It is alleged that the SP, Mr Lande, went out of his way to humiliate Mr Kalam, even violating Supreme Court guidelines by parading him before the media with a rope around his wrist and handcuffs.
No charges have been filed against Mr Kalam, who was instrumental in putting 51 traffickers in jail and transforming the red-light area into a place where women learn to reclaim places of exploitation into safe spaces.
The NHRC has asked the Bihar police to submit a report within this month on these reported violations by Mr Lande, which led to further reprisals against Apne Aap. The SP reportedly sent two dozen policemen in uniform led by two DSP-rank officers to the girls’ hostel in Araria on July 30 in a further effort to discredit the NGO.
“Apne Aap has continued to demand action against the fair contractor, but the police reacted by intimidating Apne Aap,” said Ms Gupta.
The police claims about girls being missing from the hostel and being forced into prostitution were refuted the next day by the district superintendent of education, who wrote in the hostel visitors’ book that these claims were “fabricated” and “no girl was missing”. The hostel is run in partnership with Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, and UN agencies have recognised its role in the anti-trafficking campaign.
Mr Lande, however, claimed the NGO’s allegations were “baseless” and that the police was investigating an apparent sex racket.