"It was an extraordinary sight, and even officials were stunned," Vijay Kewat, a child rights activist, said.
Abandoned by employers and packed with haste onto a special train carrying migrant workers home, the children poured onto the platform at Gaya station in eastern India last week, Kewat said. And many promptly disappeared into nearby streets, he added.
"That day at the station, everyone realised that there were thousands of trafficked children being sent back home as factories were closed and nobody was documenting this return," said Kewat, who works at the charity Centre Direct. Over the last two weeks, similar instances have been reported from Rajasthan to Assam to Delhi. With transport starting to resume after the strict lockdown, child workers are being sent back home by their employers, armed with fake identity documents, child rights campaigners say. Some are accompanied by their traffickers and run the risk of being trafficked again once businesses reopen, they add. Children working in hazardous occupations are at higher risk now since no employer will reveal their identities and numbers as employing them is a criminal offence, said Puja Marwaha, CEO of charity Child Rights and You (CRY).
India has launched multiple campaigns to check child labour in recent years, cracking down on factories where children are hired. The vigilance has only driven the trade deeper underground, child rights campaigners say, with the scale now visible as fearful employers abandon or banish the children, many of whom were trafficked into illegal work. Indian labour laws ban the employment of anyone aged under 15, but children are permitted to support family businesses outside of school hours. Employers and human traffickers widely exploit this provision, child rights campaigners say.
"Since the lockdown began, we have been worried about children trapped in workshops," said Basant Haryana of the Child Rights Watch Group in the western city of Jaipur, where children are used to make popular handicrafts. "We first spotted them queueing up for food, and then when the lockdown eased, they were just put on private buses and sent home illegally. An opportunity to document them was lost."
Pramila Kumar, chairwoman of the Bihar State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (BSCPCR), explained, "This is an organised crime, and we would like to ensure that the children who have returned home do not go back to work."
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