Sanjeev Kumar Patro

Bhubaneswar: Is a crime disaster in the making in Odisha? The State has seen an unprecedented rise in kidnapping and abductions of children. In a span of 5-years, the humongous rise of 1041 per cent in child kidnapping & abductions looks simply mindboggling.

Sample this. In the year 2012, Odisha had recorded kidnapping and abductions of mere 96 children. The numbers in 2017 stood at a massive 1,095, reveals the NCRB 2017 report released recently. The numbers clearly showed how the victims have jumped by a whopping around 1,041 per cent between 2012 and 2017.

Significantly, the number of arrests made under sections 366 - 369 of the IPC and data of conviction under the same sections available with the State looks very dismal. The conviction under the sections stood at around 1 per cent only.

Though some police officials attribute the high rise in kidnapping & abductions to mostly elopement of girls with their boyfriends, and the parents of girls later filing a kidnapping/abduction case, the NCRB data, however, showed such cases at mere 81.

The data has, in fact, revealed that number of cases under section 366 of IPC (kidnapping to compel for marriage) has shrunk to around 7 per cent in 2017 from over 31 per cent in 2014. This clearly shows it's the rise in other kidnapping cases.

As per the data available with State Police, kidnappings and abductions of children are not happening only in tribal hamlets of the State.

Rather, the district-wise data shows majority of such cases have come from districts like Baleswar, industrial town Angul. Jagatsinghpur, Puri and Jajpur along with the tribal but mining-intensive districts like Mayurbhanj and Keonjhar. Kandhamal and Rayagada too have recorded more such cases over the years.

Bhubaneswar and towns like Berhampur also record a sizeable child abduction cases as a whole.

The reasons behind rise in kidnappings are not uniform across the State.

In tribal districts, districts with high migrant labourer population, children were taken by fraud to supplement cheap labour outside State.

On the contrary, in coastal and border districts, like Baleswar, kidnappings seemingly have a more sinister design as kidnapped children are ploughed into sex, drug and organ trade, revealed a high ranking police official.

Few years ago, there were reports that CBI was conducting investigations regarding forcing of minor girl children in porn trade, post surfacing of some porn clips on internet involving minors, especially, from the coastal districts.

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