Krishnagar, June 23: Thousands missing and a life lost ? a wake-up call loud enough to make the Bengal government sit up and take note.

The government is drawing up a plan to put an end to trafficking of girls and increase awareness. The plan includes rehabilitation of girls who were rescued ? often from red-light districts ? but have been turned away by their families.

The Telegraph had reported a series of incidents of girls going missing in the state, especially in East Midnapore district, after being promised jobs. One of them, Malati Giri (in picture), had fled from home and into the clutches of a trafficker who took her to Delhi. She escaped and came home to Contai, but not for long. A glass of poison ended her 13-year-old life.

Nadia had hit the headlines in August last year when Bhola Biswas, a garment trader of Tehatta, who had borrowed money from an acquaintance in Delhi, allegedly sold his wife to a couple of touts there for Rs 15,000. A district police team rescued Reena and her month-old baby from a red-light district in the capital and arrested Bhola.

Poverty also did Phulia’s Deepali Basak in. She sold her 10-year-old child to a brothel in Bihar and was arrested when she was plotting the same fate for her 13-year-old daughter.

The government exercise will begin in Nadia and spread to North 24-Parganas, South 24-Parganas, Murshidabad and the border districts of north Bengal.

Nadia district magistrate Rajesh Pandey said an action group comprising representatives of gram panchayats, panchayat samitis and the zilla parishads was set up last week and they will be asked to co-ordinate with the BSF and the police.

Committees will also be formed at the village and sub-divisional levels to begin an awareness campaign, Pandey added. “The pradhans, with police help, have been asked to go from village to village to look for touts who are luring young girls away on fake promises of jobs elsewhere.”

District superintendent of police R. Rajsekharan said his officers would help village local bodies trace touts and their contacts. “Even if parents and close relatives of the victim are involved in trafficking, they will not be spared. We will arrest them and start suo motu cases against them even if there is no complaint,” he added.

All information on touts and their contacts along with photographs and case studies would be fed into computers to create a data base.

Rajsekharan said the police would also distribute leaflets and other literature among villagers detailing the ways touts function.

Pandey said it has often been found that girls rescued from brothels and dancing bars are rejected by their families.

“We will set up rehabilitation centres for them. With the help of NGOs, they will be given vocational training and education. We will also provide them with loans to make them self-reliant.”