Innocence at peril: Kids die, learn to kill as crimes against them rise

Two separate incidents involving minors, including a Dalit girl, have once again put the spotlight back on the rising crimes and violence against children across the country. In the first incident, a minor Dalit girl was gang-raped and the heinous act filmed by 12 accused in Hisar village of Haryana. In the other case, a five-year-old boy kidnapped for ransom was killed by two teens in Pune.

While a shocked nation was coming to terms with these two shocking incidents, in yet another incident a minor boy was reportedly severely thrashed by his employer, a Delhi-based jeweller, for not getting up early enough in the morning. The common strand in all the three incidents is that crimes against innocent children are on an unprecendented rise, even as authorities are failing to rein in the offenders despite laws being in place.

A Zee Research Group analysis on government data reveals that in all 33,098 cases of crime against children were reported in the country in 2011, as compared to 26,694 cases in 2010, thus suggesting a 24% increase. As per the state-wise data, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Delhi and Maharashtra are among the states to have recorded the highest number of criminal cases against children.

Lamenting the trend, Kiran Jyoti, executive director of NGO Salaam Balaak Trust, which works for children, says, “Every child deserves a safe society. Clarity in laws concerning children, especially regarding uniform age for judgments is the most immediate need of the hour.” Highlighting the dual risk that crimes involving children pose, Anjali Pawar, director at Sakhee, another child-centric NGO, said, “The problem concerning vulnerability is not just one, but actually two-sided. It’s true that children are prone to crime, but their tendency of getting involved in crime is also increasing as we can see in the recent Pune kidnap-murder case.”

Yet another worrying trend pointed by the National Sample Survey data is that still 49.84lakh children are estimated to be working across India. The whopping figure comes in the backdrop of government’s ambitious social welfare projects such as the National Child Labour Project (NCLP) and Grant-in-Aid (GIA) schemes under the aegis of Union Labour Ministry.

Given that the ministry is still operating 7,311 special schools for child labourers in 266 districts under the NCLP in 266 districts for 49.84 lakh child labourers, it is anyone’s guess that they are not yielding the desired result of eliminating the malaise of child labour.