India approves first anti-human trafficking bill

India's cabinet on Wednesday approved the country's first anti-human trafficking bill, increasing penalties for perpetrators and focusing on helping them recover from their ordeal, in a bid to battle the growing scourge.

Traffickers abduct or lure women and children, mostly from remote villages, with false promises of jobs before selling them off to brothels, factories or gangs which force them into begging.

Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi said the new bill made a clear distinction between the trafficker and the trafficked, unlike in earlier cases, when victims were themselves at risk of being thrown in jail, as for example after police raids on brothels.

Nobel laureate and child rights activist Kailash Satyarthi hailed the bill as a "historic achievement".