The Supreme Court on Monday issued a notice to the Centre on a plea to enforce a ban on sexual exploitation and trafficking of children and minor girls through orchestras, dance bars, massage parlours and spas.
These rackets operate in Bengal, Delhi, Bihar, Assam and Rajasthan, according to the petition filed by NGO Just Rights for Children Alliance.
A bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi agreed that the matter was of a grave nature.
“It is submitted that minors, especially girls, are routinely trafficked, criminally confined, subjected to coercion, criminal intimidation, debt bondage, and are compelled to perform sexually explicit, obscene and exploitative acts for commercial gain, exposing them to grave physical, psychological and sexual harm,” the petition stated.
The NGO said it conducted rescue operations in coordination with partner organisations and police authorities across Bihar, Bengal, Rajasthan and Delhi between March 2025 and May 2026.
“These operations resulted in the rescue of 212 minors from orchestras and 12 minors from massage parlours and spas. The rescued children, aged between 10 and 18 years, were trafficked interstate from Bengal, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, as well as cross-border from Nepal, and other regions, and were subjected to systematic and repeated commercial sexual exploitation,” the petition stated.
According to the NGO, the continuing, systematic and organised trafficking, sexual exploitation and forced labour of children below the age of 18, particularly minor girls, are perpetrated under the
pretext of employment through deception, false promises of work, fame and financial gain.
The petitioner submitted that the exploitation was taking place due to a “critical legislative omission” under the Child and Adolescent Labour (Prohibition and Regulation) Act, 1986. While the Act, as amended in 2016, prohibits the employment of children below 18 in hazardous occupations, several sectors that have demonstrably evolved into organised sites of child trafficking and sexual exploitation remain unlisted and excluded, it said.