• The Union Cabinet approved the draft Trafficking of Persons (Prevention, Protection and Rehabilitation) Bill 2018.
• The Bill which could not be tabled during the Budget session because of continued disruptions deals with trafficking and aggravated forms of trafficking.
• The proposed anti-trafficking Bill is likely to be tabled in Parliament during the Monsoon Session.
• While the former category of crimes carries a jail term of seven to 10 years, the latter carry a punishment of 10 years in jail to life imprisonment.

• Aggravated offences include trafficking for the purpose of forced labour, begging, trafficking by administering chemical substance or hormones on a person for the purpose of early sexual maturity, or where a survivor contracts HIV.

• Activists, as well as sex workers, have appealed to the Ministry of Women and Child Development, which drafted the legislation, that the Bill should explicitly state that consenting adult workers will not be penalised under the new law.

• When a law prescribes life imprisonment for trafficking leading to AIDS or begging or injecting of hormones, it will ultimately lead to criminalisation of trans-identities.

• The law would also lead to a multi-fold increase in violence against sex workers.

• If a sex worker is violated, she won’t be able to go to court because she will be immediately understood as exploited, trafficked and sent to rehabilitation.

• Forceful rehabilitation as laid down under the proposed legislation would uproot sex workers and deprive them of their source of livelihood.

• It is against the basic tenets of rehabilitation as it did not distinguish between trafficking and sex work and failed to assure dignity to consenting adult sex workers.

• It would also be a roadblock in HIV prevention.

• Certain clauses in the Bill endanger freedom of expression.

• Section 36, 39 (2) and 41 which pertain to advertisements or material that promote trafficking as well as solicitation through electronic modes lend themselves to misuse.

The Hindu