In March this year, the Kochi City police booked the owner of a restaurant at Edappally for allegedly manhandling four volunteers of Childline Kochi. The Childline team had been on a mission to rescue a child employed at the hotel, when they faced the sudden assault. The boy, a native of West Bengal, was 16 years old, according to the Aadhaar card produced by the hotel owner.
“But when the volunteers raised suspicion, the hotel owner unleashed an attack even as the boy escape through the backyard,” recalled Nirish Antony, coordinator, Childline Kochi.
The case of the boy, who was located soon after and sent back to his native State, is just one of the many crimes being reported against children in the district.
As per estimates by the police, the district witnessed 216 incidents of crimes against children in the first eight months of 2017, including 69 rape cases. Of this, the Ernakulam Rural region accounted for 130 cases, including 45 rape cases and eight cases of kidnapping. In 2016, the two regions together reported 296 cases under the head, as against 204 cases the previous year.
Parental discord
The Childline authorities attributed the rise in the number of crimes to an increasing incidence of parental discord.
“It is a good sign that people are coming out to report such offences, but equally worrying is the fact that the number of cases is on the rise,” they said.
“In most cases of parental discord, the children eventually become instruments through whom parents vent their anger,” said Mr. Antony.
Trafficking
According to him, there has been a sharp increase in the number of children being trafficked to Kochi from other States and being employed in posh apartments as domestic workers. “Establishing these cases, however, is not easy as the offence often takes place with the consent of the victim’s relatives,” he added.
A top official with the Kerala police attributed the the spurt in crimes being reported to proactive policing coupled with increased awareness in society about crimes against children. “The actual number of offences could still be a lot higher as either the victims or their parents are not ready to report the crime because of fear of embarrassment or out of sheer ignorance,” he said.
