New Delhi: A Parliamentary Committee on Thursday recommended 10 years of rigorous imprisonment for those trafficking in children noting that they "deserve the maximum punishment".
The panel also suggested similar imprisonment of not less than seven years for those trafficking in adults.
"Any person who commits human trafficking shall be punishable on first conviction with rigorous imprisonment for a term which shall not be less than seven years for trafficking in adults and not less than 10 years for trafficking in children and in the event of a second or a subsequent conviction with imprisonment for life," it said.
In its 17-page report on the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Amendment (ITPA) Bill 2006, presented to Parliament, the committee said the red light area and brother-based prostitution accounted for 10 to 20 per cent of the total flesh trade in the country.
There was a sharp increase in other forms of prostitution including shifting/mobile brothel prostitution, it said.
The proposed amendments were aimed at widening the scope of the law, focusing mainly on the traffickers, treating women as victims and not as culprits and making its implementation more effective.
The amendments also aimed to provide more stringent punishment to the traffickers and to the persons availing services of the victims.
The committee strongly felt that there was an urgent need for a complete relook at the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act 1956, touching upon all conceivable aspects.
Though an attempt had been made through the proposed amendments to bring the serious problem of trafficking under the Act, it said this could only be considered a "half-hearted" attempt as the cross border dimensions of the problem remained untouched.
Recommending that more women police officers be appointed to deal with crimes under ITPA, the panel said the Government should initiate a training and sensitisation programme for such officials to ensure that victims who were already under trauma might be saved from further harassment.
The committee felt that the time had come for National Aids Control Organisation to reinvent its strategy to widen its reach to people other than the women in the brothels.
"Commercial exploitation has widened, it has gone up from lower level to higher level," the committee said.
It recommended that the Government should create a special fund for welfare, rehabilitation, health care and education of sex workers as well as their children.
The committee strongly felt that there was an urgent need for undertaking public awareness measures at every level including, schools and colleges to "treat sex workers as normal human beings."
Such an environment, if generated, would go a long way in integrating sex workers into the mainstream, it said.
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