The two Telugu States have the dubious distinction of lakhs of children being married off before the legal age while thousands of children also go missing, and child trafficking is a cause for concern that society needs to take seriously, said the Nobel laureate, Kailash Satyarthi.
The National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), 2015, report revealed that in A.P. and TS 3,19,108 girls and 3,21,073 boys were married before they attained 18 years of age, he said, adding that between 2013- 2015, the number of missing children that were reported were 17,560.
Mr. Satyarthi, who was in Hyderabad to speak about his Bharat Yatra to fight child sex abuse, said these numbers are merely indicative of the amount of child trafficking that takes place in these States, and that these children are then sold multiple times and forced to endure physical, mental and sexual assault.
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The Bharat Yatra would be flagged off from Kanyakumari on September 11 and would culminate in Delhi on October 16. It would reach Hyderabad on September 21 and be received by the child abuse survivors, apart from social activists. It would enter Anantapur in A.P. before coming to Telangana where the A.P. Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu would receive it.
He said he was involving religious leaders to create awareness, given their huge influence on the common people and he had already held talks with them in Delhi and Ajmer.
“I am also meeting leaders of different faiths in Telangana to seek their participation in making our children safe,” he said. He said the Nobel Peace prize in 2014 has given him the ammunition to further the struggle for the rights of children.
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