The crime of trafficking in persons is carried out by different types of traffickers, ranging from individuals exploiting their partners to organized criminal groups operating across national borders. Trafficking in persons is usually thought of as a “Transitional Organized Crime”. And indeed, many trafficking outfits meet their criteria of transitional organized crime groups as spelled out in the United Nations Conventions against Transitional Organized Crime. Aspects of the crime are often committed in different countries by criminals not necessarily hailing from the country where the crime was detected. These criminals may have organized themselves to a lesser or greater extent. In some cases the complexity of the crime requires a high level of organization. In other cases, victims of trafficking in persons may have been trafficked by an individual trafficker operating in a local community.In both cases, the profits that human trafficking can generate is the prime motivation for the criminals, and exploiting other people can be lucrative. Just as profit potential is an important consideration for most legitimate businesses, so it is for traffickers, who have a strong financial incentive to operate where profits are high. Broadly speaking, this means that traffickers will often choose to carry out the exploitation in a location where this will be more profitable. At the same time, traffickers also have to take into account costs and the risk of detection, which tends to increase as more territory and international borders are traversed.

A glimpse of the world statistics in percentage published by United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime in “A Global Report on Trafficking in Persons 2014”.

The 2014 TIP report states the poor record of prosecution in the region by all countries. In 2013 only 7,124 offenders were identified. 1,904 were prosecuted and 974 were actually convicted. This is in the backdrop of the fact that there are over 12000-50000 women and children who are trafficked into India every year, according to estimates by several NGO’s. Over 300000 children are involved in begging. A very large number of children are involved in forced labour in various industries.