The district unit of the Childline India Foundation and the District Legal Services Authority will jointly conduct a legal literacy drive named ‘Alert’ to sensitise policemen to the effective enforcement of POCSO (Prevention of Children from Sexual Offences) Act. The project that aims at conducting a series of legal awareness sessions will cover Kozhikode city and rural police districts.
The first session in the series meant for Deputy Commissioners of Police, Assistant Commissioners, Circle Inspectors and Station House Officers will be held here on Friday. District and Sessions Judge M.R. Anitha will open the event.
There will be 17 sessions which will be attended by police officers from the city and rural police districts. The main aim of the project, according to Childline coordinators, is to declare Kozhikode the first POCSO-literate police district in Kerala. Also, the police stations will strive to create a child-friendly ambiance and adopt measures to prepare POCSO vulnerability map on the basis of the total number of complaints received in a year.
In Kozhikode district, the Childline introduced the project after noticing an upsetting pattern of growth in the number of cases registered under the Act. The 2016-17 record reveals that 109 cases of sexual assaults against children have been reported from the district. The total number of persons arrested in connection with the cases is 73.
“The intention of this special project is to equip all policemen, irrespective of their designation, to handle child abuse cases with zero tolerance. It will also train them in a better way to handle medico-legal and psycho-social aspects of the cases in which children are the victims,” says M.P. Muhammadali, District Coordinator of Childline India Foundation. The National Legal Services Authority is the main sponsor of the project to conduct the training programme covering over 34 police stations, he adds.
