SC Asks Govt to Implement New Law on Child Trafficking by Dec 2016

The Ministry of Women and Child Development has been asked to implement a new child trafficking law by December 2016.

Supreme Court wants the Centre to put OCIA in place by December 2016. (Photo: Reuters).

In a bid to curb trafficking of girls for sexual exploitation, the Supreme Court on Wednesday asked the Centre to operationalise probing of human trafficking cases across the nation. The court has asked for the Organised Crimes Investigating Agency (OCIA) to be put in place by 1 December 2016.

A bench also asked the Ministry of Women and Child Development to complete the consultation process on the issue of making a comprehensible legislation within six months. The legislation is to deal with issues like prevention, rescue and rehabilitation of the victims of trafficking for commercial and sexual exploitation. The bench had set up a panel headed by its Secretary on 16 November.

The ministry had earlier favoured a comprehensive legislation on trafficking.

The Ministry of Home Affairs had simultaneously favoured setting up of the OCIA for investigating cases of human trafficking.

The bench, headed by Justice A R Dave and comprising Justices Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph, then disposed of the 2004 PIL.

Earlier, it had asked all states and UTs to provide the data of FIRs to the home ministry within a fortnight. The data was of FIRs registered between 2014 to September 2015 with regard to girl child trafficking under certain provisions of the IPC and the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act.

The MHA will collate the data and will file an affidavit, it had said.