Kidnap of minors from Bengaluru, mainly aged between 10 and 15 has shockingly doubled, statistics with Bengaluru police has revealed. Suspected to be case of run away children or forced away to indulge in begging, the scenario has been termed ‘shocking’ by experts.
Though the infant’s kidnap from Bowring hospital is first one reported this year after a newborn was stolen from Vani Vilas Hospital in 2012, the statistics of kidnap of minors in Bengaluru has escalated.
The number of missing minors aged between 10 and 15 has increased from 100 in 2013 to an appalling 220 in 2014. While 2015 has recorded 515 persons missing or kidnapped (till August-end) out of which 428 were minors. However, police claim that over 40 per cent of the cases are either false or a case of elopement.
Supreme Court advises child missing cases be treated as kidnap.
According to city police sources, most cases of minors missing are elopement of girls and thus are escalating the figures. “The recent kidnap of an infant was an one-off incident. Some cases of kidnap end up as false complaints and some are those with involvement of relatives and acquaintances to settle personal scores with parents of the child,” said a senior police officer.
KSCPCR sources reveal that gangs involved in kidnap of minors are active in Bengaluru, Belagavi and others parts of the State, including those targeting child traffickers and those indulging in illegal sale of boy infants.
‘Alarming’
The Karnataka State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (KSCPCR) chairperson Kripa Amar Alva is quick to call the city’s child kidnap situation as ‘alarming.’ “Kidnapping of children is on the rise not only in Bengaluru but across Karnataka. Northern parts of the State have remained hotbed for the crime. While many are kidnapped, some run away from home following abuse. But in most cases, children are kidnapped for primarily pushing them into begging, which is much worse than one can imagine,” the chairperson averred.
Ms. Alva said that the commission has taken the present scenario seriously and is now studying the reason for the rise in incidence of child kidnap in the State and the steps to curb it.
