HYDERABAD: In the last four years, Telangana reportedly saw over 1,700 women and children rescued from sex trafficking. However, not a single accused of sex trafficking was convicted. This shocking data was put to perspective by a research report, ‘Situation of Child Trafficking in states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana’ undertaken by Dr Pravin P Patkar, a retired faculty member of TISS, which was released on Saturday.
The report highlights that from June 2014 to July 2017 the CID wing of Telangana police rescued 1717 victims of whom 222 were children and 1495 were adult women. During the same phase through 1081 traffickers, 48 pimps and 908 clientele were arrested by the police, none of them could be convicted under any of the available sections.
Experts opine there are multiple reasons as to why the conviction rates are so poor in these cases. “For better conviction rates, there should be stronger cases built against the accused. The police can use POCSO, JJ Act, Immoral Traffic Prevention Act and provision of IPC. However, the data from NCRB highlights that, in the case of child victims, the cases are more than often not filed under the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act,” explains Mamatha Raghuveer of NGO Tharuni.
In fact, of the many cases, Telangana saw on crimes against children, across 2014-16 the sections under ITPA was used only for 6 cases, with two in 2015 and 1 in 2016. The lions share of cases were filed under POSCO(1447) and JJ Act(672). “The high number of cases under POCSOA and negligible under ITPA raises questions whether the trafficking cases against children are now merely being treated under POCSOA,” notes the study, thereby making data on child victims go missing.
Even in adult women trafficking cases majority of the cases were booked under IPC sections 376 (3248) and not ITPA(684) between 2014-17. Experts add that the additional punishment under ITPA of the minimum of 7 years to the maximum of lifetimes with a fine of Rs 1 lakh can make the case stronger for traffickers. Mahesh Bhagwat, Commissioner of Police for Rachakonda noted that the lack of convictions was also due to the fact that these networks were becoming highly sophisticated, giving complications to the investigators.