Social activist Shaina NC’s online petition —‘Direct State Police to Arrest Men Who Sexually Exploit Children’ — launched last week garnered 1,10,000 signatures in eight days leading to a deliberation on having a state-specific strategy to curb the increasing demand of children for commercial sexual exploitation.
While emphasising on the need for strict laws to punish ‘customers’ paying to exploit children sexually, the petition will be delivered to Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis immediately after the current winter session of Assembly. He will be requested to direct the state police and Anti-Human Trafficking Units (AHTUs) to arrest the child predators who have wrongly been termed and let off as ‘customers’ as these perpetrators are equally responsible as the brothel owners and traffickers for pushing children into the flesh trade.
“These perpetrators termed as customers are living their lives with no fear of prosecution and are at times made witnesses against brothel owners. These people may be cab or auto drivers, or people living with us in our society. During raids, the police merely give a warning to these customers after which they let them go. What about our children?” Shaina NC, executive chairperson of the NGO, Giants International, asked.
Dr. P.M. Nair, Chair Professor, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), said the word customer does not exist in our laws. “He is an offender and a criminal. Those paying to sexually exploit children are violating human rights and cannot be termed as customers. As many as 75% crime against children remain unreported in Mumbai. So many children are suffering in silence. We need to start from Maharashtra and then we will take this to other parts of the country,” he said.
Pratibha, (15), from Amravati district who was trafficked in the age of 13 by her own family members said that initially she was studying in a hostel after her parents passed away. “I have two younger siblings who stay with my grandparents. During that time, I was kidnapped and sold by my uncle to a lady who then took me to Madhya Pradesh. There I was given hormone injections to look older, after which I was sold. I want girls like me to get justice, I have come out of it and know what happens in such places, I have been through that and survived it all,” said Pratibha, who is now studying in Class X.
Roshan Dalvi, former Bombay High Court justice said, “ There are many cases where the accused is not available, there is nothing that the judges can do.”
