The achievement also motivated the Ministry of Home Affairs to initiate a training programme under which nearly 10,000 police officers from six states will be covered till June.

The first such programme, being held at the Punjab Police Academy in Phillaur, in collaboration with UNODC, aims

to train police officers in handling human trafficking cases effectively.

Dr Geeta Sekhon, project coordinator, Anti-Human Trafficking, UNODC, said today that the training of 13,000 police officers and public prosecutors across the five most vulnerable states — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Maharashtra, Goa and West Bengal — has brought

a significant impact in the fight against human trafficking in the country.

“There has been a marked increase in the number of traffickers arrested and convicted, victims rescued and cases registered under the Immoral Trafficking Prevention Act, 1956,” Dr Sekhon said.

She added that over 1,000 traffickers have been arrested between January 2007 and December 2008. “Besides, over 1,000 victims have also been rescued from the clutches of commercial sexual exploitation,” Dr Sekhon said.

What, according to her, has come as a welcome change is that “people, especially the law enforcement personnel, now see victims as ‘victims’ and not as accused”.

“As many as 297 anti-human trafficking units have been sanctioned for various states of the country. They will be set up in the next four years in order to counter the illegal operations of human trafficking being run at a very large scale,” Dr Sekhon said.

Some districts of Punjab will also have anti-human trafficking units as per the plan chalked out by the Ministry of Home Affairs.

“The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s anti-human trafficking campaign has provided an impetus to the nationwide efforts against the crime listed as the second most prolific crime after the trade of arms and drugs,” she remarked.

On the second day of the training programme, in which about 25 officers, most of them of the rank of superintendent of police (Detective) from different districts of the state participated, a delegation from the UK briefed them on various aspects of the crime.

Deborah Harrod, chief superintendent and Steve Harrod, superintendent, Leicestershire Constabulary, UK, interacted with the participants on issues like forced marriages, honour-based violence and human trafficking in UK respectively.