Even though Assam had a 93% dip in human trafficking cases, an unprecedented rise in unrecovered abduction victims, cases of abduction and missing person reports raise questions if trafficking has actually dropped
Assam has recorded the highest number of untraceable abducted persons last year among all the states in the country.
The latest annual report of the National Crime Record Bureau (NCRB) revealed that a total of 13,413 victims – 2,444 males and 10,969 females – who were abducted last year have not been traced yet. Assam is followed by Madhya Pradesh with 8,872 and Rajasthan with 4,880 persons suspected to have been abducted.
Director General of Police, Assam, Mukesh Sahay said, “Cases of kidnapping have increased, but kidnapping for the cause of ransom has declined considerably. Most of these are marriage related cases in which the girl or the boy elopes and then when found, these are not reported back. We will look into this sector more closely.”
The report which was released on November 30 by the Union Home Minister, Rajnath Singh, also revealed that cases of kidnapping in the state have increased by 27% from 4,824 cases in 2014.
Another police official explained that the gap has been caused due to “lack of coordination” with the police of the other north-eastern states.
“Most of the kidnapping and abduction cases reported are that of adults. These are mostly cases of elopement than abduction. In most of the cases the victims have been taken to the neighbouring states. It is difficult for us to rescue the victims from those states since it depends on coordination with their police,” he said.
As many as 6,126 cases were children who have been kidnapped including 534 males and 917 females which place Assam in the sixth position after Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi. Assam has 7% of all the cases in the reported in the country according to the report.
The report pointed out that Assam has shown improvement in terms of the overall crime scenario than last year with a decrease of 0.4% in various cases registered under Indian Panel Code (IPC) and Special Local Laws (SLL) in 2016 than the previous year.
In 2016, the state recorded 1,07,014 cases while in 2015 it recorded 1,07,465 cases. Assam ranked 15th among all the states and contributed 2.2% of the total crimes (48,31,515 cases) in the country.
“For the first time in 12 years, there has been a drop in crimes in the state. Even though it is marginal, this is a positive sign. There are a few areas where it has increased too and we will be closely monitoring them,” Sahay said.
NGOs claim spurt in human trafficking
Several NGOs engaged with the rescue and rehabilitation of trafficked victims argued that the rise in kidnapping and abduction cases is an indication of the increasing trend in human trafficking in the state.
The NCRB report recorded a dip of 93% in the trafficking cases from 1,317 in 2015 to only 91 in 2016, which the NGOs are finding difficult to believe.
“Assam ranked highest in terms of human trafficking and contributed more than 35% of the total trafficking cases in the country last year. The figures dropping drastically within a year are very hard to digest. There is a possibility that the trafficking cases were recorded as that of kidnapping or missing person reports,” said Digambar Narzary, chairperson of Nedan Foundation that operates a helpline number for trafficking related cases here said.
The NCRB recorded a 36% rise in missing person’s cases from 3,382 in 2015 to 4,600 in 2016. Out of the missing persons, 57.6% have not been recovered yet.
Monisha Behl, a female rights activist and a founder member of Northeast Network, which focuses on community work with women and children in northeast said, “Trafficking mostly happens in the backward places where it is hard to gather evidence and establish that the cases fall in the category of trafficking. Often the FIRs are reported as that of abduction or that the person went missing. So, it can be said that trafficking happened, but it was misreported.”
