Nagpur registers 80 offences under POCSO Act till Oct this year
Nagpur: Recently Ajni police arrested a teacher employed at New Apostolic English School located at Kukde layout here, on the charges of sexually exploiting a 9 year-old girl studying in class IV in the same school. Earlier this month, a 16-year-old girl was allegedly exploited by her tuition teacher. The accused would make the class X student stay back on the pretext of extra class and would commit heinous crime. Frightening it may sound, the stories of child abuse are so closely knitted that gets difficult at times to gauge where the threat lies. Family members, close friends, neighbors, school and tuition teachers have emerged as abusers in an overwhelming majority of cases.
The data from city Crime Branch reveals that between January and October 2019, total 80 cases have been registered under Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POSCO) Act- 2012. While year 2018 witnessed total 99 cases under POSCO Act.
Addressing the critical issue, Deputy Commissioner of Crime (DCP) Detection, Gajanan Rajmane has elaborated on the key role of parents to intervene into the matter and suggested that only kids’ faith and trust on their parents would easily bring such incidents to the fore.
Communication is the key:
“Digitalization and modernization has widened the gap between parents and children. Children should have faith that their parents will listen to their agony. Only then a child would tell his/her feelings to parents. Leaving our cultural taboo behind, parents should talk to their children about good touch and bad touch and refresh it every couple of months. They also need to break the glass ceiling and discuss about sex in a healthy way,” said the DCP.
Accused will get punishment, but child loses innocence:
“Though, the accused will face imprisonment after conviction, but the child losses his innocence. The pain and agony which follows the crime, hunts them for their entire life. Some narrates their ordeal to their parents, however, most kids never do. The kid who faces abuse does not have many avenues to discuss it,” said the DCP.
Importance of faith and trust on parents:
“The known accused often uses process of ‘grooming’ where he spends days preparing the child. The accused first use threats, bribes to gain trust of the child. By doing so, the accused ultimately decrease the chance of child narrating their agony and future misery to anyone. Hence, the parents should bridge the gap of their friends and communicate with them on regular basis. Faith and trust on the parents are the most significant factor eliminating such incidents,” mentioned Rajmane.
Hiding crime makes you culprit:
DCP further asserted, “Hiding child abuse is also a crime under POCSO Act. Suppose if any teacher sexually exploits a student and the head-master found intestinally hiding the matter to protect the pride of the institution, he by law is committing crime and becomes a culprit.”
– Shubham Nagdeve
