Crayons Boost India’s Child Trafficking Convictions

A Goa courtroom with pink walls, colouring books and no witness box has created a vital space for trafficked and exploited children to testify without fear, ensuring more convictions of their abusers, say jurists.

Now the success of the child-friendly court model in the western Indian state is spurring the introduction of similar rooms in courts across the country, adding to those in capital New Delhi and the southern state of Telangana.

“Children testify if they are given time and space,” said Vandana Tendulkar, judge of the Goa Children’s Court, the first to be set up in India more than a decade ago.

“There are no black robes allowed in my court and even the policemen cannot enter in uniform,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation, adding that children’s testimony is the strongest evidence for conviction.