One woman’s commitment to finding trafficked children in rural India
Rural India is filled with stories of missing children grabbed and forced into various forms of modern slavery including forced labor, forced marriage, sexual exploitation, and organ trafficking. As told in the Indian Express, these stories inspired Pallabi Ghosh to start an organization that works with local law enforcement to investigate, rescue, and rehabilitate trafficking survivors across India. The organization also conducts awareness-raising about the risks of modern slavery with families living in the rural communities they work in.
Children falsely declared positive for COVID then harvested for organs
20 years ago, Ghosh visited a village in West Bengal where she met a man whose daughter had gone missing. This prompted her to start researching missing children across India. She uncovered multiple instances of missing girls who had been forced into marriage in distant states to men twice their age. She also learned the term ‘human trafficking’ and what it meant. Then, during the pandemic, Ghosh heard about children who had been falsely declared positive for COVID-19, killed, and their organs harvested and sold. This injustice prompted Ghosh to establish the Impact and Dialogue Foundation.
Ghosh said:
“Convincing police officials to lodge and book a case is a daunting task…I have come across people who have normalized trafficking and believe that fighting it yields no dividends.”