Laws Relating To Prevention Of Flesh Trade & Trafficking Of Girls And Women - Its Drawbacks & Its Strenuous Implementation In The Present Scenario In India, With Limelight On Landmark Cases
Pallavi Singhdeo, LLM (Constitutional and Administrative Law), Christ (Deemed To Be University)
ABSTRACT
Initially phrased as the Suppression of Immoral Traffic in Women and Girls Act, 1956 (SITA), to prevent trafficking for sexual exploitation, this law has undergone many changes. In 1986 the Act was amended and rephrased as the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act (ITPA). The Act and amendments made from time to time have failed to achieve its objective. Now the union government is proposing to bring in some more amendments and the cabinet has approved to the same. The most controversial and debatable provision of the proposed amendment is the penalization of a client found in a brothel with the intention of exploiting a trafficked victim. Sex workers have been raising their voice against this provision as they fear that it will adversely affect their profession and put them in a situation where they cannot negotiate for safer sex practices. Furthermore, the proposed amendments are at odds with government-run HIV/AIDS intervention programmes. There are many fallacies in the said legislature which needs to be ameliorated at the earliest to circumvent any worst case scenarios for sex workers who are mostly framed in various spurious ways. Keywords: ITPA, immortal traffic in women and girls, sex workers
