Despite making "some progress" in tackling the menace of trafficking, India needs to do more in designating and empowering a national agency to carry out an effective law enforcement response to the crime, a US State Department interim report has said.

"In September 2006, the central government responded to the need for a central anti-trafficking law enforcement effort by creating a two-person federal 'nodal cell' responsible for collecting and analysing data of state-level law enforcement efforts," the report said.

The cell identified the problem areas and analysed the circumstances creating them, monitoring action taken by state governments for combating trafficking in these areas and organising coordination meetings with the police officers of the states responsible for trafficking in persons crimes, the State Department said in its interim 2007 report, the final version of which will be put out in June.

"However, the government still needs to go further in designating and empowering a national agency or office specifically tasked with carrying out an effective law enforcement response to trafficking crimes committed throughout India," it said.

New Delhi has provided significant in-kind contributions to a USG-funded United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime two-year programme in Maharashtra, Goa, West Bengal, and Andhra Pradesh, focused on raising the awareness of police and prosecutors on the problem of trafficking and to build their capacities to investigate and prosecute persons involved with trafficking, it said.

"Law enforcement activity to combat trafficking in persons remains confined to the state-level and continues to be relatively low in comparison to the estimated extent of the situation," the report said.

"However, in June, two former state ministers in Jammu and Kashmir were arrested for trafficking in minor girls for commercial sexual exploitation, along with other senior government officials.

Two traffickers in Delhi were also convicted and sentenced to three and seven years in prison, and another was arrested in August," the State Department said.

The critical assessment has been that despite estimates of a significant debt bondage situation in the country, India reports no arrests, prosecutions, or convictions of employers using bonded labour. India similarly did not provide evidence of any rescues of victims of bonded labour, it said.

"India did, however, make moderate progress on addressing child labour; between September and November, Delhi police rescued 140 children working in zari factories and rice mills, but it is unclear how these children have been rehabilitated.

"In October, the government also enacted a ban on the employment of children in domestic work or the hospitality industry with penalties including three months to two years incarceration and the possibility of fines," the interim report said.