Air India employees arrested for trafficking women

The Hindu News Update Service – published Thurs 14 May, 2009

Since 2008, six major human-trafficking cases have been cracked in which at least 40 persons were held including different airline staffers, passport officers, agents and women from well-to-do families, who opted illegal means to fly out of the city.

The two-month-old (police investigative) cell has also busted a case in March this year by arresting four persons including two Air India employees and an agent Imtiyaz Raheem Maradia, who is involved in many such cases.

“The accused identified as Deepak Salve and Hemant Morade, employees of Air India, were arrested from the International Airport after our investigation revealed that the duo had illegally took two woman to US on their wives passports,” said police inspector Nishikant Patil of the cell. . .

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Councils urged to join anti-sex ads campaign

Croydon Guardian (UK) – Tues 28 April, 2009

Local councils should put pressure on newspaper publishers to stop the exploitation of vulnerable women as sex slaves, a campaign group says.

This is the strong message being sent out by a charity that looks after women trafficked into sex slavery in London’s brothels.

Eaves Housing has launched their Nothing Personal campaign calling on councillors and editors to take responsibility for the blight of sex trafficking in their boroughs. . .

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Climate-related disasters widen the road to slavery

Lisa Friedman – The New York Times – Mon 30 March, 2009

SATKHIRA, Bangladesh — The stench of the kerosene lamp fills the space under the roadway overpass. Two girls and their nephew, mother and father make their home here. They sit on a wide slab of concrete covered with a cloth mat that serves as their bed.

Sheik Zapharula’s face glows in the lamplight as he recounts how his 15-year-old daughter was lured off by an admiring stranger who had been coming by the family’s rooti store. It was only years later that they learned the worst of it: that within days, the girl had been hustled illegally across the border into India and sold into slavery.

Zapharula’s family is among the poorest of the poor in Bangladesh. Not only landless and jobless, they lack even the community structure of village life. Aid workers say it’s families like this one in Bangladesh and elsewhere that are most vulnerable to exploitation. Climate change, meanwhile, threatens to thrust millions more families into desperate conditions. . .

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Author provides economic perspective on sex trafficking

Lauren Mogannam – The Daily Northwestern – Wednesday 21 Jan, 2008

Contrary to popular belief, slavery is not a thing of the past, a speaker for the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies said Tuesday afternoon.

“Slavery still exists,” said author Siddharth Kara, who spoke about sex trafficking during the event. “It is a stain on humankind that must be buried.”

About 45 people crammed into the center’s conference room to listen to Kara, author of “Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery,” which was also the title of his speech. 

“Hundreds of thousands of women and children are forced into prostitution each year,” Kara said. “Victims are broken down physically and emotionally. Some are forced to have sex with up to 20 men a day.” . . . 

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