ON MAY 20, 2026, Sanjog, a social impact organisation that works on anti-human trafficking, published an ‘Anti-Human Trafficking Unit Watch Report’ tracing the functionality of Anti-Human Trafficking Units (‘AHTUs’) across all Indian states and Union Territories (‘UTs’) between 2010 and 2025 across three phases. The report draws primarily on information received from states and UTs through RTI applications, along with inputs from lawyers, civil society organisations, and survivor testimonies.
Anti-Human Trafficking Units were envisioned by the Ministry of Home Affairs as specialised units charged with preventing trafficking, conducting rescues, investigating cases, prosecuting traffickers, and aiding the rehabilitation of survivors. Their composition envisages trained law enforcement personnel working in structured coordination with Child Welfare Committees (‘CWCs’), District Child Protection Units (‘DCPUs’), legal aid authorities, and shelters.
The report which opens with National Crime Records Bureau’s (‘NCRB’) ‘Crime in India’ report reflects a rising trend in human trafficking up to 2016, when reported cases peaked at 8,132, followed by a subsequent decline. This decline, however, must be read against a troubling backdrop. The Supreme Court, while hearing a Special Leave Petition filed by a father whose eighteen-month-old daughter went missing in 2011 and remains untraced, noted that 47,000 children continue to remain untraced to date. The report cautions that the post-2016 decline in reported trafficking cases may reflect a failure of institutional documentation rather than any real reduction in the incidence of trafficking.
The report’s findings across six indicators
The AHTU Watch Report assesses the functioning of Anti-Human Trafficking Units through six interdependent indicators. These include: notification status, staffing and stability, budget and infrastructure, FIR autonomy, case progression, and outcomes. The research covers RTI filings and data analysis across all thirty-six states and UTs, interviews with Superintendents of Police and constables associated with AHTUs, inputs from civil society organisations, and structured consultations with survivor leaders and their collectives.
At the outset, the report raises a pointed question about the apparent decline in trafficking cases after 2016 on whether it reflects an actual reduction in trafficking or merely a decline in reporting, documentation, and institutional disclosure, particularly in high-incidence states like Assam, Maharashtra, and Andhra Pradesh. Since the formation of AHTUs, the Ministry of Home Affairs has issued twenty-two advisories and operational guidelines, including advisories on treating human trafficking as organised crime and on trafficking of foreign nationals, the implementation of which, the report finds, remains fragmented across the country.
On notification, relatively less densely populated UTs like Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Ladakh have a hundred percent rate of notified and functional AHTUs, while Uttar Pradesh has only thirty-five functional units out of seventy-five notified. The report underscores that notification as a separate entity, and distinct from a local police station, makes AHTUs more accessible to survivors and reduces their hesitancy in approaching the unit.
On staffing and stability, AHTU personnel across states carry the additional burden of general policing duties, significantly undermining their functioning as specialised investigative units. A survivor quoted in the report noted that AHTU officials were overburdened with general policing responsibilities and often unavailable for trafficking cases. Uttar Pradesh, notably, saw a complete reversal between phases from nearly all AHTU members carrying additional charges to none doing so by Phase 3.
On budget and infrastructure, the data is fractured. Some states and UTs have no dedicated funds and rely entirely on general police budgets, while others like Arunachal Pradesh received sanctioned funds but showed inconsistent utilisation across phases. The report notes that the absence of a dedicated budget is a reflection of governmental callousness toward the seriousness of trafficking offences, and it pushes the financial burden of legal follow-ups and travel onto survivors themselves.
On training and capacity building, the pattern is one of persistent inconsistency. Training remains exclusively police-centric, overlooking social workers, legal aid authorities, and rehabilitation stakeholders. Content is largely confined to general legal awareness, missing crucial areas like labour trafficking identification and trauma-informed investigation. The lack of specialised training in handling trafficking, according to the survivor testimonies in the report, also leads to misdirected insensitive questions, poor documentation, lack of clarity on survivor rights and an erroneous classification of trafficking cases as ordinary labour disputes or kidnapping cases. In order to strengthen the training and capacity building of the AHTU personnels, the report recommends the development of a continuous training framework with a standardized and uniform training syllabus involving various stakeholders.
On FIR autonomy and case progression, the data reveals heavy reliance on local police with minimal transfer of cases to AHTUs and even fewer investigations conducted by them. Delhi transferred thirty-one cases to its AHTU in Phase 3 but recorded zero investigations. The conviction rate across states is abysmal as states and UTs like Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, and the Andamans reported zero convictions. Telangana stands out, with 980 chargesheets filed as a result of AHTU investigations.
On coordination, the report finds the multi-stakeholder architecture structurally fragile across all phases. Coordination with the Crime Multi Agency Centre, launched in 2020 to facilitate interstate information sharing on trafficking, remains weak. Victim compensation, the report notes therefore, is contingent on the quality of documentation and offence classification by law enforcement, which is itself premised on inter-agency coordination that largely does not exist.
The consolidated national findings reflect a system afflicted by overburdened personnel, fluctuating FIR autonomy, inconsistent training, and an almost inconsequential rate of trafficker conviction. Telangana and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are identified as having relatively strong institutional practices. Uttar Pradesh and Delhi fall into the category of moderate but uneven functionality. Meghalaya and Rajasthan’s Bikaner district are identified as structurally fragile but evidence-documented contexts.
The report’s findings echo the Supreme Court’s directions in G. Ganesh v. State of Tamil Nadu (2026), in which while dealing with missing children and child trafficking, the Court directed the Union and state governments to eliminate the dormancy functioning of the AHTUs and ensure the immediate restoration of trafficked children.
The malignancy of human trafficking networks, the report concludes, can only be combated by an Anti-Human Trafficking Unit whose functioning is equally systematic, and equally committed to dismantling those networks.
