There is a bit of mystery in a certain set of figures in the possession of the Railway Protection Force (RPF).

Under Operation 'Nanhe Farishte', a union government mission to eliminate child trafficking, over 360 children on an average have been rescued every year by the RPF in Kerala in the four years between 2021 and 2024; by 2025 half, 226 children have been rescued. 

However, in the same period, the average annual number of human trafficking cases through rail in Kerala was just 3.5, less than 1 per cent of the yearly rescues; this year till now, there are three cases.

In 2023, for instance, there was not a single registered human trafficking case, though 290 children coming from other states, mostly poor states in the East, were rescued. In 2022, there were 514 rescues, and 26 was the number of children found trafficked.

Does this mean that over 99 per cent of the children who end up in Kerala had run out of their house and just lost their way? Accidental child migrants? Do these figures further suggest that child trafficking is a myth? 

Senior RPF officials, too, are baffled by this wild mismatch between children rescued and human trafficking. "We have not really focused on the number of human trafficking cases among the children rescued. Perhaps a good number of these are human trafficking cases that have escaped our notice," said Muhammad Haneef, the divisional security commissioner of RPF's Thiruvananthapuram division.

Untrained Sherlocks
He also conceded that this incongruity was "alarming"." I had talked to stakeholders involved and had been trying to get a sense of why the detections or human trafficking cases were low," Haneef said. "I am not even going into the registration of cases. Why cases are not being registered is a legal issue. Even to register cases, you have to first detect. It is a fact that we have not been able to identify the victims of human trafficking," Haneef said.

The reason for this failure, according to him, is this: "Our officers (RPF and the police) do not have the skill set to identify victims."

Prem Nath P, former deputy director of prosecutions and a master trainer in anti-human trafficking for the Ministry of Home Affairs, said that enforcement agencies also found it difficult to establish a link between these kids and their traders or agents.

"So they generally limit their efforts to rescuing the kids and taking them to the Child Welfare Committees," Prem Nath said.

Exploitation that is legal
He said the first case of mass human trafficking in Kerala was in 2014. Then, 543 children from Jharkhand and Bihar were brought to Muslim orphanages in Malappuram and Kozhikode.

"There was clear evidence of foul play. The certificates issued by the Jharkhand and Bihar child welfare committees, and also the certificates issued by the village officers, were found to be fake. But the parents of the children said the kids were sent with their consent," Prem Nath. The Kerala police had also found that the orphanages were exploiting poverty to attract philanthropic aid from abroad.

Besides the poor hapless parents, these traders of children also had the cover of law. The explanation for 'exploitation' under Section 143 of Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS) (Section 370 of IPC) says that the expression "shall include any act of physical exploitation or any form of sexual exploitation, slavery or practices similar to slavery, servitude, or the forced removal of organs." 

"Giving a group of poor kids shelter and food even if for financial gain, therefore, does not come under the ambit of exploitation," said Suneesh Kumar R, a retired IPS officer who is now a practicing lawyer.

Even the CBI, which took up the Jharkhand-Bihar case, did not register a human trafficking case. 

Ageless confusion
The law is also hazy about children above the age of 14. Under the Child Labour Act, complete prohibition of child labour, "in any establishment whether hazardous or not", applies only for kids 14 years or below. A child older than 14 is "permitted to work only to help family, in family enterprise or as child artist after school hours or during vacation". 

"So a 15-year-old child brought in from poor states like Bihar or Jharkhand to herd ducks through water for seven to eight hours a day in places like Nenmara (in Palakkad) will reach here with people claiming to be their parents," a top police officer said. The law spares these parents.

Prem Nath said these duck-herding adolescents who have their feet knee deep in water for long hours will develop gangrene and eventually will have their legs amputated.

The age confusion lets even employers get away with child labour. A top labour officer said that the only thing the Labour Department could do was to register a case against the person employing the child. 

"But this will not be enough as the law bans child labour absolutely only for children below the age of 14. Children between the age of 14 and 18 can be employed in certain areas, especially in non-hazardous work. This prevents us from going ahead with the prosecution," the Labour officer said.

These children will also not have proof of age like birth certificate with them. "This also stands in the way of taking action against child labour," the officer said.

Both Prem Nath and the divisional railway commissioner said that children who reach Kerala from other states invariably claim their age to be 18 or above. "They will insist it is 18. It is what they are taught by their minders to say when the authorities ask," Prem Nath said. He calls the children's loyalty to their exploiters as "a kind of Stockholm Syndrome".