From the brutal assault of a five-year-old girl in Delhi in April this year, to the assault and rape of five deaf and mute minors at an NGO in Rajasthan last week, incidences of crime against children in the country seem to be growing at an alarming pace. Despite this, States are in no hurry to set up State Commissions for Protection of Child Rights (SCPCR).
Only 14 States (50 per cent) have so far complied with the Ministry of Women and Child Development requests to set up SCPCR in accordance with the Section 17 of the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act, 2005.
“As no time limit is prescribed in the Commissions for Protection of Child Rights Act for setting up of State Commission for Protection of Child Rights, so individual States are doing things at their own pace,” said an official in the WCD Ministry.
“We have been sending regular reminders to States and Union Territories to set up these commissions at the earliest. In 2009, there were only four States that had State Commissions for Child Rights, now at least there are 14,” said the official.
West Bengal, Uttarakhand, Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, Rajasthan, Odisha, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka, Goa, Delhi, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Assam have SCPCRs. Punjab and Jharkhand are also working towards forming their respective commissions.
looking at the increasing crime rate against minors, there definitely seems to be a need for more redressal avenues. Statistics from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show that a total of 33,098 cases of crimes against children were reported in the country during 2011 as compared to 26,694 cases during 2010, suggesting an increase of 24.0 per cent.
Cases under trafficking of minor girls increased from 679 in 2010 to 862 in 2011, registering an increase of 27.0 per cent over 2010. Cases of kidnapping and abduction saw a rise of 34.2 per cent from 10,670 in 2010 to 15,284 in 2011. Uttar Pradesh (5,500), Madhya Pradesh (4,383), Delhi (4,250), Maharashtra (3,362), Bihar (2,233) and Andhra Pradesh (2,213) have accounted for 16.6, 13.2, 12.8, 6.7 and 6.7 per cent of total crimes respectively against children at the national level.
In the decade 2001-11, a staggering 48,338 cases of rape involving children were reported from across the country.
NCRB report showed that Madhya Pradesh topped the list of child abuse with 9,465 cases, followed by Maharashtra with 6,868 cases followed by UP (5,949) and Andhra Pradesh (3,977). Delhi with 2,909 cases is sixth on the list, which has data for 13 States.
Worse, there was a shocking 336 per cent increase in the number of reported cases of child rape in the decade, with the number of cases leaping from 2113 in 2001 to 7,112 in 2011.
Another report on child abuse by the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR), said that the reality is likely to have been many times worse as only a small fraction of such cases are ever ‘reported’ and even fewer ‘recorded’ by the police.