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The Supreme Court, successful a judgement connected Friday (December 19, 2025), observed that kid trafficking and commercialized intersexual exploitation of children by organised cartels is simply a “deeply disturbing reality” successful India which continues to flourish contempt protective laws.
The tribunal said kid trafficking networks person a analyzable and layered operation which run astatine assorted levels of recruiting, transporting, harbouring, and exploiting insignificant victims.
The judgment, which laid down guidelines for appreciating grounds successful kid trafficking cases, said courts indispensable not disbelieve the grounds of a trafficked kid conscionable due to the fact that of insignificant inconsistencies successful her evidence.
Due respect and credence
“Such organised transgression activities run arsenic seemingly autarkic verticals whose insidious intersections are conveniently veiled done subterfuge and deception to hoodwink guiltless victims,” a Bench of Justices Manoj Misra and Joymalya Bagchi said.
Also read: 964 children rescued truthful acold by anti-child trafficking cell: NCPCR
A victim’s sole grounds indispensable suffice if her mentation appeared to beryllium credible and convincing. A trafficked kid indispensable not beryllium treated arsenic an accomplice by the courts. “Her deposition is to beryllium fixed owed respect and credence arsenic that of an injured witness,” the tribunal directed.
Justice Bagchi, who authored the judgment, termed kid trafficking and intersexual exploitation arsenic an offence that struck astatine the precise foundations of dignity and bodily integrity.
‘Moral and worldly abandonment’
The judgement acrophobic a insignificant who was forcibly pushed into illicit intersexual intercourse by a pack of traffickers successful Bengaluru. Her persistent refusal to consent had led her to beryllium confined successful a rental apartment, isolated from the extracurricular world, until she was rescued by the constabulary successful November 2010.
The apical court, portion upholding the condemnation of the pack members nether the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act, said the lawsuit laid bare the “moral and worldly abandonment” of a kid whom the authorities was constitutionally obliged to support from harm’s way.
Justice Bagchi said courts indispensable not discard a trafficked victim’s mentation arsenic improbable oregon “against mean quality conduct” solely connected the crushed of her nonaccomplishment to promptly protestation against the “ostensibly innocuous yet ominous docket of the trafficker”.
“Diffused and seemingly disjoint mode successful which the transgression verticals run successful areas of recruitment, transportation, harbouring and exploitation marque it difficult, if not impossible, for the unfortunate to narrate with precision and clarity the interplay of these processes arsenic tentacles of an organised transgression enactment to which she falls prey,” Justice Bagchi observed.
Recognise vulnerability
In the contiguous case, the victim’s grounds astir the topography of the rented flat was rebutted by 2 prosecution witnesses, prompting the defence to effort to discredit her evidence.
The Bench underscored that courts indispensable carnivore successful mind, portion examining a victim, her “inherent socio-economic and, astatine times, taste vulnerability erstwhile the insignificant belongs to a marginalised oregon socially and culturally backward community”.
Judicial appreciation of the victim’s grounds indispensable beryllium marked by sensitivity and realism, it said.
“Recounting and narration of the horrible spectre of intersexual exploitation adjacent earlier instrumentality enforcement agencies and the Court is an unpalatable acquisition starring to secondary victimisation,” the apical tribunal emphasised.
