They should be the most protected, yet they are the ones at greatest risk. In Delhi alone almost 9000 kids went missing till September this year. Unspeakable crimes continue to be committed in India against those who are least able to defend themselves.
September 26: An 18-month-old girl is raped in Kolkata.
September 22: A 12-year-old tea stall worker in Ghaziabad is pushed into a pan of boiling milk by an inebriated man.
September 17: A French consulate employee is chargesheeted in Bangalore for violating his four-year-old daughter.
All this and more happened in just this month. Unspeakable crimes continue to be committed in India against those that are the most vulnerable, the most defenseless, the most innocent — kids being battered, beaten, raped. And the perpetrators could be anyone — parents, relatives, hostel wardens, strangers. The bad news is that, as the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) figures show, matters are only getting worse (see box).
While kidnapping and abduction of children accounted for 46.2% of the cases, rapes were 21.5% and other crimes 25.8%. In Delhi alone, 8,956 kids have gone missing till September this year. The 2007 National Study on Child Abuse which surveyed 12,447 children from 5-12 years came up with shocking statistics. It found two in every three children suffered physical abuse. Two-year-old Falak, admitted to AIIMS this year with severe head injuries, broken arms and bite marks, was probably the worst of the victimized lot. In 88.6% of the cases, parents were the perpetrators. Sexual abuse was faced by 53.22% children, mostly on the street, at work and in institutional care. What was most frightening was that every second child reported emotional abuse.
The deviant behaviour meted out to them is numbing. One NGO got a call from a woman who said that a CD left at her doorstep showed her powerful father-in-law in Pune abusing a boy employed as a help by pushing sticks up his anus. But despite two NGOs filing FIRs, the man was given a clean chit. In another case, a 15-year-old girl from Maharashtra reported that her father, an alcoholic and drug addict, repeatedly raped her in front of family members. "He would threaten to throttle her if she spoke up," says Nishit Kumar of Childline India Foundation.
And increasingly, technology is being used to threaten and stalk children, blighting them forever. On August 14, a 16-year-old girl from Delhi was abducted and raped by two men who filmed the act and leaked it to others. Many school-based abuses have teachers using mobiles , says Vidya Reddy of Tulir, a Chennaibased centre dealing with child sexual abuse. But what's heartening is that children are also using mobiles, internet and Facebook to report crimes, says Rajat Mitra of Swanchetan Society for Mental Health.
In Lucknow and Allahabad, an alarming trend is the use of bombs to target kids. Ankush , a teenager, died on April 29 after four miscreants hurled a bomb at him in Saraisheikh village in Chinhat. There's also been a rise in juvenile offenders. In Maharashtra , they've gone up from 4,315 in 2010 to 4,775 in 2011. On September 23, five-year-old Shubh Rawal was abducted and murdered in Pune by two students for a ransom of Rs 1 lakh.
While some quietly tolerate the abuse, many reach out for help — these days increasingly so. Childline, which runs a helpline, gets close to four million calls annually. Of these, 40% are directly by children, says Kumar. "There are SOS calls from street children as young as six years. The maximum calls are from 11-15 year-olds who just want someone to talk to. A new trend is that many middle class children too are calling up."
Just as well, as the police often doesn't show enough alacrity or interest in solving cases. On May 19, 2009, the body of Yogita Thakre, 7, was found inside a car in the then BJP state president Nitin Gadkari's residence. Postmortem report indicated blood stains and abrasions in various parts of the body. It was referred to the CID but a year later it sent a report to the court stating the case be closed. In Patna, despite the gang rape of a school girl at a residence in Shastri Nagar, no action was initiated till the state's women commission took the matter up with the DGP. The main accused is still at large. The lackadaisical probe into the Nithari case in Noida where many children were abducted, abused and killed by a psychopath, shows that young lives, especially from weaker sections, aren't valued enough.
Arvind Verma, a former IPS officer who is now in the Department of Criminal Justice atIndiana University, Bloomington, says, "For years, there has been non-registration and minimization of crimes by the police. And yet, there's been no systematic effort to even compare data from different states." Also, official crime figures don't tell the real picture. "Does anybody know how many cases of sodomy (which attracts Section 377) have been filed where the victim is a child? These are clubbed with Other Crimes," says Reddy.
But change is slowly seeping in. For the first time in India, a special court for child victims was recently inaugurated in Karkardooma in Delhi. The room for children was painted cheerfully and had toys; there's no intimidating contact with the accused either. In Kerala, there are school protection groups, says Kochi range Inspector General K Padmakumar. "Complaints submitted by children are immediately registered and an investigation conducted." Parents of victims too are ready to file complaints, whereas earlier they would hush up matters, says A Sheela, a Child Welfare Committee member.
Anything to make the world a better place for our children.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/stoi/special-report/Innocence-interrupted/articleshow/16608757.cms?
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