She left Chhattisgarh with a small bag and a dream. A man had convinced her family that she would be trained as a dancer, earn well and support them. Her parents, who were desperate and worn down by years of poverty, let her go. By the time she was found in Bihar, she was not the same girl. She had been broken by control, violence and rape. She was 14. Her story is not rare.
Until June this year, the Bihar police rescued 271 girls in the State — 153 of them trafficked into orchestras, the remaining 118 forced into the flesh trade. In Saran district, the number of girls rescued from these ‘dance troupes’ since January is 162. Between March and June this year, the Just Rights for Children (JRC) partners, working alongside district police forces, rescued 116 girls from orchestra groups.
The conditions in which these girls, stripped of dignity and brutalised into submission, were found were appalling — overcrowded, unhygienic rooms. They were presented on stage as performers, but in reality, they were victims of trafficking and sexual abuse.
Human trafficking is among the largest organised crimes globally. It inflicts severe physical, psychological and economic harm on individuals of all ages, but women and children are the most vulnerable. Once they are pulled in, getting out is almost impossible. Nearly 138 million children were engaged in child labour in 2024, including around 54 million in hazardous work, according to estimates by the International Labour Organization (ILO) and UNICEF.
Bihar as a trafficking destination
Bihar’s emergence as one of India’s most active destinations for trafficking is not incidental. At the heart of this crisis lies a complete absence of regulatory oversight and social acceptance for girls being commodified. Geography and poverty deepen this vulnerability. The State’s porous border with Nepal and seamless railway connectivity to trafficking-prone States such as West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Assam and Uttar Pradesh facilitate trafficking flows through Bihar.
In States such as West Bengal, where music and dance are integral to cultural identity, parents encourage their daughters to pursue the arts. These aspirations are preyed upon by traffickers who promise good money and even stardom. False promises of love, marriage or employment are also used to lure girls. In districts such as Saran, Gopalganj, Muzaffarpur, Rohtas and West Champaran — the ‘orchestra belt’ — girls, some as young as 12, are being sold to orchestras for as little a sum as ₹10,000. They are forced to wear inappropriate clothing and dance to vulgar songs before inebriated men. The girls are punished if they refuse and raped if they resist.
How the system fails children
According to the National Crime Records Bureau data, 2,878 children were trafficked in 2022, including 1,059 girls. This is a figure that barely scratches the surface. Many cases never reach a police station because families are either complicit or fear to speak. The laws are not inadequate, but in fact, comprehensive. The Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, the Juvenile Justice Act, the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, the Bonded Labour System (Abolition) Act, the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, and provisions under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita criminalise child labour, trafficking and sexual exploitation.
But conviction rates remain abysmal. Most cases are filed as kidnappings or missing person reports. Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) are under-resourced. Investigations that concern multiple States often collapse due to jurisdictional confusion and bureaucratic delay. When girls are rescued, many are sent right back to the same families that sold them.
Despite rescue after rescue, orchestras in Bihar continue to operate with impunity. Just Rights for Children, a network of over 250 NGOs working to end violence against children, approached the Patna High Court seeking urgent prohibitory orders against orchestras. The petition calls for an immediate ban on the employment of minors in orchestras.
In response, the High Court directed the Bihar government to act without delay, recognising the trafficking and exploitation of children in orchestras to be a “serious issue”. Such an acknowledgement must translate into protection at every stage of the trafficking chain.
Prevention must begin where trafficking begins. Schools must monitor attendance. When a child goes missing for weeks, it must trigger alerts and reports. Panchayats must maintain migratory registers. When children disappear, someone in the village always knows and that someone must be required to act. Parents should be made aware of what might happen to their daughters.
Transport vigilance must be ramped up. The Railway Protection Force (RPF) has been monitoring vulnerable corridors and conducting awareness drives at railway stations. This model must extend to inter-State bus routes, local terminals and private carriers. Transport departments must train their staff to identify signs of trafficking.
AHTUs need full-time officers trained to coordinate measures across borders, track networks and follow a case from rescue to prosecution. They should be held accountable.
There should be an immediate and absolute prohibition on the employment of minors in orchestras. These groups must be identified, mapped and regulated. Premises where girls are confined must be sealed. Owners, landlords and organisers must be prosecuted and their assets must be attached. The Labour Department must be mandated to inspect, report and act. Prosecution must be time-bound and rehabilitation must be long-term and state-supervised. Children must not be sent back to the environments that enabled their exploitation. Victim compensation schemes must be enforced rigorously.
Prevention is protection. Prosecution is protection. Prosecution is prevention. Trafficking is not the failure of a few systems. It is the collapse of many. Laws and enforcement are only one part of the solution. Ending exploitation is possible through prosecution.
The Centre for Legal Action and Behaviour Change (C-Lab) recently released a report, ‘Building the Case for Zero: How Prosecution Acts as the Tipping Point to End Child Labour – The Case from India’, that drew data from 24 States. It showed that prosecution is key to securing justice. Along with law enforcement, the NGO network rescued 53,651 children from trafficking and kidnapping (in 27,320 raids), pursuing legal action in every case. Nearly 90% of these children were trapped in the worst forms of child labour.
A strategy rooted in prevention
To succeed, we need a strategy rooted in prevention, and we need to call it PICKET. First, it begins with ‘Policy’ — strong and clear policies that prohibit child labour and exploitation. Second, ‘Institutions’ must be required to monitor, prosecute and rehabilitate. Third, the ‘Convergence’ of agencies, digital infrastructure and survivor-centred response is essential to combat trafficking. Fourth, ‘Knowledge’ is key where community awareness and intelligence gathering are crucial. The insights of survivors are among the most powerful tools we have to dismantle trafficking networks. Fifth, ‘Economically’, trafficking must be made unviable. And, sixth, ‘Technology’ must be used to track traffickers, build databases, generate heat maps and predict movement patterns. None of this will work unless States share data, digitise case records and cooperate.
Justice is not punishment, but it is prevention before harm. The only way to prevent the next girl from being trafficked is to dismantle the system that allows it. We have the tools. We have the laws. All that remains is the will. The longer we wait, the more we lose.
Bhuwan Ribhu is a child rights activist and the Founder of Just Rights for Children