LUCKNOW, India – Era enero de 2021 cuando dos amigos adolescentes, Ajay y Durgesh, fueron atraídos con engaños por un hombre de su confianza de su misma aldea en una remota y pobre área rural del este de Uttar Pradesh (UP), el estado más poblado de India, situado en el norte del país.

The 16 -year -old boys were taken from their homes, transported and sold as slave labor to a clothing factory in Rajkot, in the western state of Gujarat.Rajkot is about 2000 kilometers from the small town of Ajay and Durgesh.

Together with two other teenagers from the same village, Sanjay (15) and Pavan (14), Ajay and Durgesh became friends with a man, only identified as Gulab, who promised them an eight -hour daily job, with a salary of 7500RUPIAS (about 100 dollars) per month in a clothing factory.

The four teenagers accepted the offer immediately because Gulab was from the same town and knew him from childhood.

In the factory, the boys were thrown along with dozens of other children who never charged anything about the promised salary.

“They woke them up at 7:00 in the morning and forced them to work until 11:00 at night.The owner of the factory threatened to kill them if they left it, ”said Pucknow, the capital of UP, a union leader known only for his last name: Dalsinghar.

He added that “the children were mistreated and kicked when the supervisor considered that they did not work quickly enough.None of the children received enough food. ”

Dalsinghar is, in addition to union leader, head of the UP Office of the Liberation Front in servitude throughout India.

With the support of the Office in India of the International Organization Actionaid.

These guys are lucky to have escaped from the claws of the traffickers.Ajay found a mobile phone one day and quickly called his family and managed to give them the exact location of the factory at the distant Gujarat.

The family contacted Raju, a volunteer from Actionaid India, who lived near his people.With the help of Dalsinghar, Raju and the administrations of the districts of Kushinagar, in UP, and Rajkot, in Gujarat, the boys were rescued, and their eight -month Calvary in the hands of the owner of the clothing factory ended.

But your case is far from exceptional.There are more than numerous victims deceived by known people.

An example is that of Gulab, originally from the same town as the four teenagers, who fooled, caught and sold an owner of a clothing factory.

With the hope of ending the deprivation and hunger they suffered in especially adverse economic times, adolescents accepted Gulab's offer.They trusted him and fell into his lies because they didn't occur to them that he would betray them.

Actionaid cites other cases in which a loved one has cheated the victims.When this happens, the victim does not usually defend himself.

Sita was sold as a girlfriend to traffickers by her alcoholic father in a town in Western Bengal, a state of eastern India.She took her from one place to another until she found shelter in a Hindu meditation and teaching center) of a city of UP.The police were informed and the girl was able to return to the town of her.

You can read here the English version of this article.

The most frequent cases of missing children and adults include kidnapping and human trafficking.Most of the time, missing persons are not denounced to the police, and if denounced, complaints are not registered or are not investigated.

The children of the poorest families are the most vulnerable to the crime of traffic and trafficking in human beings.

They are the main objective of traffickers, since it is most likely that poor and illiterate families do not go to the authorities in search of help.There are cases of children and adults who leave their homes in search of conquering glamor and fortune in large cities like Mumbai.

Once in the cities, they are easy prey to street vendors and other thugs, who force them to beg or work as sexual slaves without remuneration or concern for their health.

Actionaid India continues to work in the villages providing support to survivors of trafficking and violence with medical, psychosocial and legal help.

The Covid-19 Pandemia has made times extremely difficult for communities.At the close of schools, the drastic falling work opportunities in most villages, which means that social activists such as Dalsinghar must be more attentive than ever before slave mafias.

The 2014 Nobel Peace Prize winners, the Pakistani Kailash Satyarthi and the Indian Malala Yousafzai, have rescued thousands of children from the worst form of child labor and human trafficking.

Satyarthi, recognized local and worldwide for their struggle in favor of working children in India and founder of the non -governmental organization global march against child labor, has led a national mobilization to demand legislation against rape, sexual abuse and traffickingof children in this country in southern Asia with more than 1400 million inhabitants.

The Kailash Satyarthi Child Foundation conducted a study in 2020 in which it was concluded that it was very likely that the traffic of people increased in the period after the suspension of work activities by the COVID, which has occurred since that year, duringThe different outbreaks of the infections.

Around 89 % of the Oenegés surveyed said that trafficking in people, both adults and children, for work purposes would be one of the greatest threats in the later period the paralysis of activities, since the income of the households of the mostVulnerable are exhausted.

It is concerned that the desperate and vulnerable populations of non -organized workers, who are not in a position to negotiate their salaries or their rights, constitute a massive source of cheap labor.Many of these workers could be children, forced to leave school and make a living as it is, which end up trapped in slave conditions.

It is feared that thousands of children are victims of human trafficking throughout the country to work in factories in which they will be paid a scarce or zero salary and, in all likelihood, they will face extreme physical, mental and sexual violence.

Thousands of children such as Ajay, Durgesh, Sanjay and Pavan are easy objectives for an organized traffic crime network and people trafficking.It is feared that many more will be enslaved during the pandemic for those who seek cheap labor when many economic activities have been paralyzed and work is scarce.

"It is tragic for people to betray children," Dalsinghar concluded to IPS.

T: MF / ed: EG