New Delhi: The US has placed India and 11 other countries on a special watch list on human trafficking for their alleged failure to prevent human trafficking.
The Department of State Trafficking in Persons Report says the 12 countries, which have been put on the list for the third straight year, failed to show evidence of increasing efforts to address human trafficking.
"The Government of India does not fully comply with the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking; however, it is making significant efforts to do so," noted the report released by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Monday.
India is a source, destination, and transit country for men, women, and children trafficked for forced or bonded labour and commercial sexual exploitation, said the report.
The country is also a destination for women and girls from Nepal and Bangladesh trafficked for commercial sexual exploitation.
Boys from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh are trafficked through India to the Gulf States where they are forced to work as camel jockeys.
The report alleged corruption among law enforcement officials affects India's ability to fight trafficking. Corrupt law enforcement authorities facilitate the movement of trafficking victims and protect traffickers and brothel keepers.
"India lacks a national law enforcement response to any form of trafficking but took some preliminary measures to create a central law enforcement unit to do so. However, India did not take steps to address the huge issue of bonded labour and other forms of involuntary servitude," the State Department report said.
The report urged India to consider designating and empowering a national law enforcement agency with both investigative and prosecutorial jurisdiction to come to terms with inter-state and international trafficking.
The report said that over the last year India sustained "modest" efforts to punish trafficking but there were no significant improvements, with some of the shortcomings being attributed to the relatively short prison sentences for bonded labour.
"The Government at all relevant levels neither vigorously investigated nor prosecuted acts of any form of trafficking found in India, nor did it report a significant number of convictions or sentences for these acts of trafficking," it said.
The Indian Government criticised the report, saying it was the "judgmental and prescriptive approach of a foreign government" and will not help in furthering dialogue between the two countries on the issue.
"The US has a practice of issuing global reports on a wide variety of subjects from human rights and religious freedom to narcotics and trafficking in persons," External Affairs Ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said. "Such reports are, by their very nature, based on US viewpoints and pre-conceptions," he said.
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