The Legal Services Authority (LSA) in India offers arbitrarily low amounts as compensations to victims of trafficking out of charity or pity. Despite several High Court judgements in the country clarifying how compensations should be calculated, commensurate with injuries suffered by a victim, the LSA continue to pay ridiculously low compensations ranging from INR 20,000 to INR 100,000.

Our intervention

1.Tafteesh Lawyers studied various judgments on Victim Compensation and strategized how survivors can claim Victim Compensation in order to compensate for their rights violation.
2.Lawyers, survivors and social workers had conversations to understand the rights violation and draft a Victim Compensation application with computation against each of the rights violation.
3.Wherever the LSA refused to pay due compensation survivors challenged the order to High Court to get justice.
4.Tafteesh did a RTI based research on Victim compensation fund utilisation for each of the States and Union Territories and use that research findings to push the system.
5.Tafteesh reached out to other organizations and survivors collectives outside Tafteesh to influence them to follow Tafteesh model on Victim Compensation to put pressure on system not only for disburse fund as justice of individual survivor, but also make system accountable for affirmative steps, so that Trafficking will not be a profitable business.

Impact

1.Total 51 survivors received Victim Compensation in West Bengal and Andhra Pradeshwith a range of INR 1,00,000 to INR 8,00,000 (interim compensation).
2. The Victim Compensation become game changer to survivors’ life and it brought back survivors’ participation.
3. Tafteesh Victim Compensation report findings recognized in JTIP report.
4. Learning from Tafteesh strategy survivor from outside Tafteesh organization could get order of INR 9,00,000 (highest in West Bengal so far).