When the State’s northern part, especially Mayurbhanj, was agog with mob policing over alleged child traffickers, the grim reminder for Odisha is three children from the State got trafficked every five days in 2016.
According to the State police data, a high of 206 children (below 18 years) were being trafficked in 2016. What is alarming is the trafficked children numbers grew by an eye-popping 44 per cent in 2016 in the State. And, district-wise data reveals the trafficking hubs in State are Mayurbhanj, Keonjhar, Baleswar, Kandhamal, Sundergarh, Balangir, Nuapada, Koraput and Ganjam.
However, if the State police data is to be believed, then the child trafficking cases in the State have fallen steeply from the average of around 600 children per year for the period of 2000-14.
In 2014, the children trafficked stood at a high of over 827, reveals the data. And the State police top sources also claimed that the rescue rate has improved over the years. “ From a rescue rate of 74 per cent, the rescue rate in 2016 has been a whopping 93 per cent as the State police have rescued around 192 trafficked children in 2016,” informed a top police official in the State Crime Branch.
But a close analysis of the accessed data available with the State police revealed that still a whopping around 259 children trafficked out from the State during the period 2014-16 are yet to be traced out.
Moreover, if backlog of not rescued trafficked children from 2014 is taken into account, then the rescue rate in 2016 has been greatly reduced to a mere 43 per cent. This shows a lot more area is to be covered by the State law enforcing agencies to combat the menace and build confidence among the people to prevent such mob-policing on such sensitive vices like child trafficking in the State.
Significantly, when the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has recommended the State Government to involve the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) in order to make the investigative procedures concerning missing/trafficked children more transparent and user-friendly, no such initiatives have been taken up in affected districts, which led to surfacing of most horrendous mob-policing instances as witnessed recently.
According to the NHRC Task Force on Child Trafficking, the police investigating teams need to involve the community at large, such as representatives of PRIs/ Municipal Committees/ Neighbourhood Committees/Resident Welfare Associations, etc, in addition to existing help lines so as to enable the community to get fully involved along with the police in tracing the missing children.
The NHRC committee has advised the DGP to seriously consider taking full advantage of these agencies in the task of not only investigating crimes relating to children but also in tracking down missing/trafficked children.
“The role of the Panchayats and such bodies should be extended, like prompt reporting of missing children, prompt dissemination of intelligence, if any, to the law enforcement agencies, rendering assistance to law enforcement agencies for tracing children and providing timely feed-back to the law enforcement agencies about child’s return,” the committee observed. Rights activists, therefore, feel the time is now opportune to implement the NHRC advisories to fight this social-crime menace.