Times
of India: Raipur: Friday, 17 October 2014.
Amid alarming
rise in human trafficking and growing incidence of women and children going
missing from Chhattisgarh, Supreme Court on Thursday summoned state chief
secretary Vivek Dhand and DGP AN Upadhyay, to appear in person on October 30
and explain why they did not submit details of steps taken to trace missing
persons so far.
TOI found
that nearly 65,000 women and children have gone missing between 2001 and 2013
in Chhattisgarh. Of this more than 40% still remain untraced. Official data
received through an RTI shows children and women at Raipur, Durg, Jashpur and
Bastar are most vulnerable.
On an
average, 330 women and 230 children go missing every month in Chhattisgarh and
the figures are rising every year. Officials admitted that majority of those
missing were trafficked and pushed into domestic slavery, prostitution,
marriage or beggary.
Recently,
Chief Lokayukta S N Srivastava intervened in the issue. He found there were
organized gangs working on juvenile criminals and jails, who connect with them
to lure children to join them. "There are international gangs that push
the vulnerable ones into slavery, beggary and pick-pocketing," he said.
Srivastava has given time till December to his officials to properly implement
several schemes and take steps to curb human trafficking and missing children.
Talking to
TOI, Rishikant from national NGO, Shaktivahini, working with women and child
rights said, "Supreme Court's intervention and summon on CS and DGP itself
shows laxity in Chhattisgarh's law enforcement. Being a hub of child
trafficking, issue of increasing number of children going missing has to be
dealt with seriously in Chhattisgarh. Tracing a child isn't a tough job if one
really intends to, we have been doing it in accordance with police for past
many years." Congress spokesperson Shailesh Nitin Trivedi said it was high
time, the state government wakes up to calls of growing missing children and
apex court's order.
Putting the
blame on Raman Singh government, he said, "It's shameful that thousands of
children are still missing and despite that police avoids lodging an FIR."
Supreme Court
had, earlier, directed many states to file a compliance report, following a
petition.
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