BERHAMPUR: The district administration’s awareness campaign to check sexual crimes against minors has failed miserably as there has been an alarming rise in child rape cases in Ganjam.
In 2018, as many as 145 cases of rape and sexual harassment of minors were reported in the district. Till November this year, the number of such cases have jumped to 159.
If the statistics were not startling enough, most of the victims in the cases are in the age group of 7 to 13 years. While one minor is being raped in every two days on an average, one or two cases under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act are under trial in the district courts every month.
Two years back, the district administration had launched ‘Paree Pain Kathatiye’, a campaign to draw attention of people to the sexual crimes against children. The programme was implemented in technical collaboration with the UNICEF. Vehicles called Paree Express were rolled out to different parts of the district for a fortnight to educate people on the issue. Many people also took part in the campaign. However, it seems the campaign has failed miserably to bring the desired results as sexual assault on children continues unabated in the district.
Activists pointed out that minors are more vulnerable to rape because they often fail to put up any resistance against such acts as the abuser is much stronger than them. What makes the children more vulnerable to such crimes is the rapist is known to them. In almost 90 per cent of the cases, the victim knows the perpetrator, they said.
Last week, a 65-year-old man raped a seven-year-old girl at Saru village in Hinjili, the Assembly constituency represented by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik. Last year, a seven-year-old girl was kidnapped while she was sleeping near her mother at Kabisuryanagar and and raped. This incident had trigged a massive public outrage in the district.