The recent horrific lynching incident which took place in Karbi Anglong district has once again shifted the state’s focus to the issue of child trafficking and kidnapping in Assam.
Last week two youths from Guwahati, Nilotpal Das and Abhijit Nath, were mistaken to be child lifters (or xopadhora as they are called in Assamese) by locals and were beaten to death by a mob in a village in Karbi Anglong. Experts believe that the innate fear of child kidnapping a mong locals stems from the real threat of abduction and trafficking of children which has been commonplace in the state.
Explaining the history behind the concept of child lifters, Miguel Das Queah, a city-based child rights activist informed that it is a traditional child protection measure used in Assamese society as well as other parts of the country.
“Using this technique, children are taught not to talk to strangers. This was a conventional form of child protection adopted by most Assamese families,” said Queah.
He, however, added that the threat is real and not perceived because in Assam several cases have been registered for missing children, many of whom have been trafficked.
“However, in this particular incident, the circulation of that message was completely false and done with malicious intent,” he said.
As per the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data, in 2015, Assam topped the list of states having the highest number of child trafficking cases with a total of 1,317 registered cases. The state’s contribution to this data at 37.7 percent of the all India total was the highest in the country.
Further, according to the data of Guwahati Childline - a programme under the Ministry of Women & Child Development (MWCD) meant for the safeguard of children in need of care and protection - a total of 73 cases were reported under “missing children” in 2017. Another agency for child protection under the state government has been receiving around 15 cases of missing children on an average every month and many of these later turn out to be trafficking cases.
Child protection experts believe that this is because of the socio-economic and political realities such as conflict and marginalisation of communities in hill areas, agricultural crisis and displacement; there are a lot of children who are deceitfully trafficked or they go out looking for alternative occupations which finally becomes unsafe migration and they get stuck in this vicious cycle of exploitation.
Officials say that Guwahati is fast becoming a “source centre” for trafficking children to other states of the northeast as well as places like Haryana, Delhi, Punjab and Kolkata.
Abani Haloi, coordinator of the Guwahati unit of Railway Childline, which works to provide emergency rescue and protection services to children at railway stations, said that areas with railway connectivity are highly prone to trafficking.
Most child protection agencies under-resourced
Many of the child protection agencies in the state are under-resourced, say authorities. They feel that the shortage of manpower and resources prevent them from fully utilising their potential.
“Anti-human trafficking units do not have adequate manpower and resources. On the other hand, the police have a long way to go to become child-friendly since people are scared to respond in police cases and children are scared to approach the police.
So, this is a combination of factors which leads to the breakdown of child protection system of the state, which is why children are very vulnerable,” said an official.
Further, authorities say that the number of cases registered in the city against trafficking of children reflects only a small percentage of the total cases.
“It is difficult to get a fair idea about the nature and extent of trafficking by looking at the number of registered cases since it is carried out mostly in a concealed manner, especially in the remote areas and villages,” said secretary of the Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights (ASCPCR), Anuja Bhuyan.
According to child protection experts, children who are trafficked or kidnapped, already suffer a vulnerability which might be economic as well as social. Further, children living in tea garden areas, hill areas, conflict areas and places which are prone to floods are more vulnerable to get trafficked since the continued deprivation in these zones makes them hot spots for trafficking.
The state government on its part has established anti-human trafficking units (AHTU) in all districts of Assam in order to combat human trafficking, especially of women and children. For this, the district superintendents of police (SP) have been assigned the task to monitor these units. Officials informed that the SPs work in collaboration with the civil society, NGOs working in the field, panchayat members and government agencies to identify vulnerable areas for human trafficking.
Recent prominent child abduction cases
The state, as well as the city, has seen a number of cases of child kidnapping and abduction in the past few years.
In a case of trafficking, a 13-year-old girl from the city went missing from Katabari in April last year. The girl was lured by a suspected agent who abducted her on the pretext of taking her on a road trip.
She was later rescued after a few months in October from Haryana and was brought back to Guwahati. The police later revealed that she was sold off for Rs 30,000 and was being forced into marriage in a village in Haryana.
In a more recent incident which took place in February this year, a five-year-old girl was kidnapped from a school in Guwahati. She was, however, rescued after 11 hours by the city police and three persons were also arrested in connection with the case on charges of kidnapping. The five-year-old was kidnapped from outside her private school.