For Mamata to ask for investments into her state without any responsible action to crimes against minor girls is reprehensible. This woman need to take care of people in her state first which she made it a living hell for sake of vote bank politics. Whether it is 71 year old or 11 year old, there are simply not safe in West Bengal that boasts in US, UN and other reports as the worst place for human trafficking (28,000 per year!!) and has the biggest red light district (Sonagachi) in Asia. If anyone wants to know how Mamata treats rapes in her State, read our pamphlet with references http://www.satyablog.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Pamphlet-on-Mamata-Banerjee-v6.pdf

This is simply evil and a shame on India. We need to get this woman tried for crimes against humanity.

We request those in India to contribute organizations like Hindu Samhati (http://HinduSamhati.net/donate ) who are working at great risk to their lives in this lawless state.

71-year-old-gangraped-in-bengal-now-another-nun-kidnapped-manhandled-mangaluru-1686260.html

71-year-old nun gangraped in West Bengal: The Mangalore incident once again proved that women are not safe in this country. Recently, a gang of robbers looted a convent school and gangraped the “oldest nun” present in the school. [Nun gangrape in Bengal: 7 questions that have kept the investigators busy] West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee faced protest when she reached Ranaghat to meet the victim. She promised to take action against the culprits who are yet to be arrested. Mamata Banerjee was quoted as saying, “The sister is doing well. Some arrests have been made but we are looking for the mastermind. The borders are being monitored and if they have gone to other states, we will make arrangements to catch them.” Meanwhile, there was uproar in Parliament over the nun gangrape case. Opposition party members raised questions why culprits have not been arrested so far. OneIndia News

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-17/girls-kidnapped-for-forced-marriage-suffer-rising-crime-in-india

Bloomberg: Girls Kidnapped for Forced Marriage Suffer Rising Crime in India

by Andrew Macaskill Bibhudatta Pradhan

December 17, 2013 — 5:00 PM EST

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Dec. 18 (Bloomberg) — Rupsona’s kidnappers struck at dusk, when most children in her village in eastern India were outside playing and their parents were resting after tending crops all day. The 14-year-old student had just finished geography class and was walking home along a road lined with rice paddies when she felt a blade at her throat.

The man holding the eight-inch knife and his two accomplices were clear: If Rupsona didn’t quietly climb into a nearby car, they would slit her throat. When the door closed, she was beaten, groped and forced to swallow pills that made her woozy. Two car rides and a train trip later, she and her captors arrived at her final destination: the town of Kaithal, almost a thousand miles from her home. A man was waiting for her. He told her that his name was Sandeep Malik and that she was his wife.

Later she would learn he’d paid $800 to have her abducted. On her first night in captivity, Rupsona said, Malik forced her to have sex again and again. The nightly abuse continued for fourteen months, until she escaped.

“Everyone knows he had sex with me, so I will never be able to get married again,” said Rupsona, sobbing as she described her ordeal. “I am like a cracked egg.”

Now age 16, she sat on a traditional rope bed wearing a green tunic in her parents’ mud-brick home in the district of Malda in West Bengal state, where she was returned a year ago after being rescued by the police. “Every night I have nightmares. They may come again. What is to stop them?”

Lethal Equation

Rupsona’s abduction, verified by police documents, springs from decades of neglect of female infants and the growth of sex-selective abortions. That has produced the lowest ratio of women to men in India’s history and the lowest in the world among major countries, after China.

A lethal equation in which new wealth has increasingly afforded greater access to technology means that female fetuses have never been at greater risk in India. With ultrasound equipment available to a growing number of people, couples that adhere to the Indian cultural preference for sons can abort pregnancies if they discover they aren’t having a boy.

In an economy that’s grown almost fourfold in the last two decades, young women are abducted mainly from the poorest states, where the sex ratio is more balanced, and transferred to richer regions. About 100,000 Indian women were trafficked for marriage last year. That’s an increase of about 20 percent since 2006, according to New Delhi-based Empower People, a group that fights bride kidnappings.

‘Scarce Women’

The declining sex ratio “is an example of how India’s growing economy has aggravated entrenched social problems,” said Ravinder Kaur, a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi who has studied bride trafficking for more than a decade and is writing a book on the subject. “To put it bluntly, what we are witnessing is a competition for scarce women.”

Though bride kidnapping also takes place in other Asian nations, India stands out for its combination of rising wealth and reported abductions. In China, the Communist Party moved to stamp out trafficking of women for marriage after it came to power in 1949. In recent decades, as the sex ratio has become more unbalanced, official media cite reports of abductions for marriage, both in terms of females being trafficked internally and into China from South East Asia.

Bride kidnapping has been practiced in Kyrgyzstan since at least the early part of the 20th century and although outlawed is still widespread. In India, bride trafficking was uncommon until about two decades ago, when the shortage of women became increasingly pronounced, said Shafiq Khan, the founder of Empower People.

Getting Worse

“Historically it was very rare,” said Khan, who estimates that his organization has rescued about 400 trafficked women in the past seven years. “Now, in parts of the country it’s accepted as normal and it is getting worse by the day.”

Kidnapped brides and sex-selective abortions aren’t the only manifestation of the brutal treatment of women in the world’s largest democracy. In India, some girls are raised to become prostitutes, a woman is raped on average every 21 minutes, a third of all females are illiterate and millions of women lack access to the most minimal level of sanitary protection. The country also performs the most female sterilizations in the world.

The rape and murder of a 23-year-old medical student one year ago this month prompted a national outcry and a flurry of lawmaking. But little has changed for millions of women like Rupsona, who has been robbed of her future at a young age.

Tall and thin, her nose pierced with a gold stud and her hair tied with red ribbons, Rupsona spoke with long pauses as she recalled the day she was snatched. She was wedged in the car between two of her abductors, who put their hands over her mouth to silence her screams and kept her from breaking free.

Flower Drawings

The men told her if she attempted to escape they would bury her in a nearby field and her parents would never find their daughter’s body. Later they fondled her breasts and rubbed their hands between her legs. She was crying and calling out for her mother, Rupsona recalled, sitting in a room decorated with her drawings of flowers and birds.

Several weeks after she arrived in Kaithal, Rupsona was married in a modest Hindu ceremony attended by her husband’s family and a few friends, who were offered sweets and cigarettes. When she objected to being forced into wedlock, Rupsona’s husband barred her from leaving the house. Her routine started at 6.30 a.m., when she woke and made breakfast. The rest of her day was filled with washing, cleaning and other chores for her husband, his parents and a brother.

When the police found her, Rupsona was four-and-a-half months pregnant. Tears rolled down her cheeks as she explained how after her rescue she chose to abort the child she’d conceived with the man she was forced to marry.

Family Absconded

Police documents reviewed by Bloomberg News and interviews with officers confirm Rupsona’s kidnapping. Efforts to track down the man whom police say paid for her abduction, as well as his family in Haryana, one of India’s wealthier states, were unsuccessful. Neighbors said the family had absconded after the November 2012 police raid in which Rupsona was freed.

Law-enforcement officials in Malda, the district where Rupsona was bundled onto a train to New Delhi after being shoved into the car, said two of the suspected kidnappers were long-time criminals wanted for other offenses as well, including armed robbery.

“The men are in hiding right now but they won’t be able to do that forever,” said Kalyan Mukhopadhyay, the top policeman in Malda, which has a population of about 4 million people and where fewer than one in four households have a toilet or electricity. “When they need money they will pop up and we will be ready.”

No Forcing

Krishna Tirath, India’s minister for women and child development, cited the government of Haryana in a parliamentary reply to questions in 2011 that there are no forced marriages in the state, where Rupsona was coerced into wedlock. Tirath didn’t respond to three written and three telephone requests for comment. Nita Chowdhury, the top civil servant in the department, didn’t respond to three e-mails and multiple calls.

Montek Singh Ahluwalia, the deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission, which designs the country’s social policies, didn’t respond to three e-mails and two phone calls requesting comment. Pankaj Pachauri, communications adviser to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, referred to a 2011 Singh speech.

“It is a matter of deep regret for us that the sex ratio has shown a decline from the level of the last census,” Singh said in the Aug. 15 address celebrating Independence Day that year. “It is not only necessary to implement the existing laws effectively but it is also essential to change the approach with which our society views girls and women.”

Poorest Corners

Most bride kidnappings occur in the impoverished parts of rural eastern India, in states such as West Bengal and Assam, where male-female ratios are among the narrowest in the country, meaning a relatively greater supply of women. The victims are snatched or duped by trafficking rings with a promise of jobs, then sold into wedlock in richer states for between $150 and $4,000, police in West Bengal said.

So wretched are the lives of some of India’s poorest women that being kidnapped and sold into marriage can constitute stability. Mariam, who uses one name and is in her early 40s, says she has been living with her husband in the village of Gohana in Haryana since he paid $240 for her 20 years ago.

It was the third time she changed hands. Orphaned at six, she had survived by begging for scraps of food outside restaurants with three brothers and a sister. When she was about 12, she said, a man in a truck told her that he had been sent by her aunt to collect her from the town where she lived near India’s border with Myanmar. She believed him.

Wedding Ceremony

He took her to New Delhi and sexually assaulted her for several years, she said. She lived in his home after they were married in a wedding ceremony. When he tired of her, he sold her to another man, who abused her as well.

He eventually sold her to her current husband, a widower now in his 50s whose right side is paralyzed after an accident. She oversees the house and runs a small tea stall in the village.

“I look after my husband and do whatever he needs,” said Mariam, wearing a faded olive-green sari with holes in it as she sat on an orange plastic chair in the sparsely furnished office of Empower People in the town of Nuh in Haryana.

Posters with slogans against trade in women covered the peeling yellow paint on the walls. “We can end bride trafficking with determined action,” read one.

“After everything I have been through I am relatively happy and at least I am safe now,” Mariam said.

The price for a bride is determined by the woman’s age, perceived beauty and whether she is a virgin, the United Nations said in a 2013 report on human trafficking in India.

Ancestral Roles

“Most ‘purchased brides’ are exploited, denied basic rights, duplicated as maids, and eventually abandoned,” according to the report. They are exploited “under conditions that amount to a modern form of slavery.”

Figures from India’s 2011 census show the number of girls born per 1,000 boys dropped to 914, from 927 in 2001 and 945 in 1991. The decline over the past three decades, when India’s population grew by more than 500 million, has been most extreme in the richest states of the northwest, the census showed.

The traditional preference for sons in India is deep-rooted. Men are expected to carry the family name, care for parents in old age and light their fathers’ funeral pyres.

Having a daughter is viewed as incurring a lifetime of debt because of the custom of dowry payments. Female infants are almost twice as likely to die before the age of five than their male peers, the UN said in a 2011 report.

Weak Enforcement

While India outlawed sex-determination tests in 1994, they are carried out widely, especially by better-educated and wealthier parents, according to a 2011 study published in the London-based Lancet medical journal. It estimated that as many as six million female fetuses were aborted in the period from 2000 to 2010.

Ultrasound technology, which became more widely available in the 1980s, has spread to small towns served by traveling doctors who carry the portable machines from clinic to clinic, said Kaur.

An ultrasound machine can be bought online in India for as little as $1,750 and clinics perform the tests for $10 and up.

The Indian government has tried to limit the use of ultrasounds as a tool to determine gender by requiring official registration of clinics. The punishment for revealing the sex of a baby is a prison term of as much as three years and a 10,000 rupee ($161) fine.

Biggest Increase

Yet enforcement of the law is weak: By 2011, 17 years after the law took effect, there had only been 55 convictions in a nation of 1.2 billion, according to data collected by India’s health ministry.

Of all the increases in reported crime against women in the past decade, kidnapping is up the most. Those cases have risen 188 percent, rapes are up 57 percent and cases of abuse by a husband or his relatives have increased 110 percent. So-called dowry murders, in which a husband or his family kill the bride if the marriage gift from her parents is deemed insufficient, are up 33 percent.

The abducted women are called “paro,” a slang term for “bought women.” Those who fail to bear sons are often resold to other unmarried men at a lower price, according to Empower People’s Khan.

Falling Price

Ronak, who uses one name, said her price fell by a third each time she was sold. She has deep scars on both cheeks that make her look older than her 40 years.

A dark green sari wrapped tight around her thin frame, Ronak stood at the edge of a dirt road on the outskirts of the village of Akeda in Haryana. Her eldest son watched over her protectively as she spoke, interrupting when she was asked sensitive questions.

She recalled warning the second man she was forced to marry that she’d report him to the police after he made her repeatedly sleep with his unmarried brother.

“I thought ‘Why should women be treated like animals?’” said Ronak. “He would tell me ‘What will they do? They won’t listen to you.’”

She was first sold to a 60-year-old man in New Delhi after being lured away from her village in northern Bihar state with an offer of a job as a domestic servant and a monthly salary of 20,000 rupees. After her first husband died, she was sold to the second man.

Residence Permitted

When he died, Ronak was sold again, this time to a man in his 50s with four children. She lived with him for 15 years, until he died in 2011. After his death, the man’s relatives threatened to sell her for a fourth time but residents in her village intervened and the local leader ruled she could stay in her late husband’s home.

“Usually when someone dies it is a day of sadness but for me it was a day of joy,” said Ronak. “All my life I have been treated like a slave and passed around like an object.”

As with Mariam, contact with Ronak was made with the help of Empower People. Rupsona was found via Shakti Vahini, a Delhi-based non-governmental group that fights trafficking and was involved in her rescue. Her parents gave permission for the interviews with her.

Indian law prohibits identification of a rape victim. Accordingly, Bloomberg News has not used the family’s last name or included other identifying details.

Pilot Project

In Malda, where Rupsona was put on the train to New Delhi, a police pilot project is underway that encourages people to provide anonymous tips to officers on kidnappings and the whereabouts of abducted women. The program is in effect in 55 villages in the Malda area and will be rolled out in 6,000 more by the end of next year, said Mukhopadhyay, the district’s police chief.

“We know that people know a lot about what is happening but they are reluctant to come to us with the information,” Mukhopadhyay said. “So we have found this is a useful way of extracting it even in the remotest areas.”

It took more than a year in captivity before Rupsona’s husband made the mistake that allowed her to escape. Doing the washing one day, she discovered that he’d left his mobile phone in his pants pocket. She called her sister’s husband, though she was unable to tell him where she was living because she’d never been let out of the house.

He went to the police, who traced her phone. On Nov. 27, five officers burst into the home to find Rupsona pregnant and in the kitchen under the supervision of her mother-in-law.

Raid Video

In a video of the raid, Rupsona is seen clasping her hand over her mouth to indicate she had been kidnapped. The mother-in-law is shouting at the police that the family had paid 50,000 rupees for Rupsona and she was their property.

Since returning home, Rupsona hasn’t gone back to school. She has been treated as an outcast because she had sex with a man outside her community and because of the social stigma of having an abortion.

“People tell me I have brought shame on my family and the village,” she said, adding that she now wants to be a teacher so she can help others like herself.

“I’m ashamed about what happened to me and I want to protect other girls from going through this,” she said. “In India, girls’ lives are miserable. At every stage of life we suffer because of how men treat us.”

To contact the reporters on this story: Andrew MacAskill in New Delhi atamacaskill@bloomberg.net; Bibhudatta Pradhan in New Delhi atbpradhan@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Peter Hirschberg atphirschberg@bloomberg.net; Daniel Ten Kate at dtenkate@bloomberg.net

Kolkata gangrape: How the 16-year-old victim became a political football

by Sandip Roy Jan 3, 2014 08:15 IST

#CITU #Congress #CPI(M) #Kolkata gangrape #Kolkata rape #OnOurMind #Rape #Trinamool Congress #Violence against women

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As the rest of Kolkata ushered in New Year with the usual showers of confetti, groaning buffet tables, and jam-packed malls, a taxi driver’s family was reeling from one of the most horrific losses imaginable – the death of their child.

In this case, one could say the 16-year-old girl did not die just once. It was a death that was repeated over and over again. First there were the rapists who lured her out of her home and then gang-raped her. Then the same rapists raped her one more time for daring to complain to the police. The administration and police were unable to give her or her family any meaningful security. Then there were the goons who allegedly set her ablaze. Even after she finally succumbed to her injuries on December 31, there was no respite. The last blow came from the political parties who turned her body into the object of a grisly tug-of-war, going back and forth from the crematorium before she was finally cremated.

Sushma Swaraj once called the rape victim’s life as “zindaa laash” or a living corpse. Swaraj was widely criticized for reinforcing the rape victim stereotype instead of the rape survivor. But this 16-year-old certainly embodied a “zindaa laash” in ways Swaraj could not have imagined.

A CNN IBN screengrab of the rape victim’s body being taken to the crematorium. IBN Live.

Here are the basic facts as reported in the media. The young woman’s father is a taxi driver from Bihar. She and her mother had moved to Kolkata about five months months ago apparently because the girl wanted to study in a school in Kolkata. On October 25, Chhotu Talukdar, a local fish trader called her out of her house saying her father needed to see her. Instead he and five friends allegedly gang-raped her in an abandoned house. Her parents found her in a field the next morning.

The father took her the next day to file an FIR but on the way back, Chhotu and friends allegedly kidnapped her and raped her again in a taxi to teach her a lesson. This time she was found dazed and injured at a nearby railway station. The men were rounded up but the family’s horror story did not end.

Faced with threats from the rapists’ friends, the family moved from their tenement and rented another place. As fate would have it their landlady was related to an aunt of Chhotu’s friend. The family was once again pressured to withdraw the case and the girl was taunted and abused incessantly.

On December 23rd she was brought to the hospital with 40 percent burns. The police first thought she had doused herself with kerosene but now it turns out the young woman gave a statement naming two youths, including the son of her landlady, as having set her on fire.

The girl’s taxi-driver father is affiliated with Citu, the CPM’s trade union wing. So the CPM decided to protest her death in full force. They brought out a mammoth procession, got into scuffles with the police and it all led to a stand-off at the crematorium. The police were accused of “hijacking” the body and taking it for cremation on Tuesday night against the family’s wishes who wanted it to happen on Wednesday.

“It is being alleged that we are playing politics with death,” opposition leader Surya Kanta Mishra told The Telegraph . “But if it takes politics to counter such threats to our social order, then we will bring politics to the table. We will not take this quietly.”

The Congress also wants to organize a dharna in protest.

“The incident is unfortunate. The rest is an attempt by the Opposition to denigrate Trinamool and the government,” Trinamool leader Mukul Roy told the Times of India.

The Trinamool Congress might cry foul but it is reaping the bloody harvest of what it too sowed. Mamata Banerjee as an opposition politician was never shy about using the bodies of the dead to shame the government, most famously the nine people killed in West Midnapore in 2010 whose bodies were laid out in Kolkata’s Esplanade.

West Bengal now has a new government but it’s clearly caught in an old and vicious cycle where each side tries to give the other a taste of its own medicine. An unnamed CPM state secretariat member told The Telegraph “(T)he reality isMamata found success by capitalizing on deaths. Why should we sit idle if such incidents happens?”

But the mudslinging just moves the conversation into a different realm of settling political scores. The focus shifts from where it should really belong – law and order.

What use is it to lament that so many rape victims do not come forth to file an FIR, when the act of filing an FIR has so clearly and demonstrably led to this young woman’s re-rape, her family’s ouster from its home, and eventually her death? What confidence will the police’s actions, or lack thereof, inspire in any other assault victim?

In this case, unlike many others, the police could say they were not idle. The FIR was registered. The principal accused were in custody. Yet despite that the family found no relief at all. Within two months, a young woman who was a rape survivor became a rape victim. Though police are often accused of failing to file FIRs even when a rape victim comes to them, this young woman’s death shows that the nightmare does not end with the successful filing of an FIR. That is the most frightening aspect of the whole tragedy.

West Bengal State Police Refuses To Help Kidnapped Girl

Tuesday, 8 November 2011, 11:50 am
Press Release: Asian Human Rights Commission

ASIAN HUMAN RIGHTS COMMISSION – URGENT APPEALS PROGRAMME

Urgent Appeal Case: AHRC-UAC-228-2011
Send an Appeal Letter.

7 November 2011
——————————————————
INDIA: West Bengal state police refuses to help a family to rescue a kidnapped girl

ISSUES: Child trafficking; police-criminal nexus; corruption; impunity
——————————————————-

Dear friends,

The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) has once again received information from MASUM, a human rights organisation working in West Bengal, concerning the kidnapping of a girl, allegedly for child trafficking and enforced prostitution. The parents of the girl when approached the Swarupnagar Police Station of North 24 Parganas, it is reported that the police officers demanded bribe to initiate any action upon the complaint. The victim is reportedly held in captivity in Uttar Pradesh, and the family of the girl has informed all the details they have obtained upon their own inquiry to the Swarupnagar Police Station. Instead of taking any action, the police however have refused to conduct an investigation or help rescue the girl. This is not the first case however, that the MASUM and AHRC are reporting concerning child trafficking from poverty-struck districts of West Bengal state, like North 24 Parganas and Murshidabad, where child trafficking is rampant and flourishes due to corrupt police officers and their alleged connection with the criminals.

CASE NARRATIVE:

The victim in the case is a girl named Amrita Sur (name changed), aged about-13 years, from Scheduled Caste community, having residence at Gokulpur village, under the jurisdiction of Swarupnagar Police Station in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal state.

It is reported that two persons (one male and one female) kidnapped the victim girl on 5 January 2011. On 7 January, the victim’s father lodged a complaint regarding the incident at Swarupnagar Police Station. The police only issued a General Diary Entry concerning the incident, bearing number 337 dated 7 January 2011. They refused to take any action upon the complaint.

Finding that the police is of no help, the family searched for the victim at many places, but was unsuccessful to obtain any information until June. On 4 June 2011 the father of the victim came to know from one Mr Mithun (mobile no. 9126932331) that his daughter had been trafficked and that the trafficker, along with the victim girl could be found in the residence of one Mr Gurucharan Bachar of Harishpur village, in North 24 Parganas district. The victim’s father immediately went to this house and upon reaching there he found a person named Mr Mosayab Hasmi at the house. The victim’s father noticed his identity card issued by the Election Commission of India, and found the particulars about him as “Mosayeb Hasmi, aged 28 years, son of Mr Rojid Hasmi, House number 03/128, Mahalla Rampur Karkhana, village and police station: Rampur Karkhana, Deoria district, post code 274001, Uttar Pradesh”.

Mosayeb Hasmi informed the victim’s father that he did not take away the victim girl, but his elder brother Mr Eklakh Hasmi has custody of the girl and that she is kept in his brother’s dance group. Mosayeb Hasmi also gave his brother’s mobile telephone number (being no. 09453011794) to the villagers. Immediately from there the brother of the victim girl, Mr Haran contacted on the mobile number of Mr Eklakh Hasmi from his mobile number 8016689293. Eklakh Hasmi upon receiving the call let the victim girl to talk on the phone. The victim girl informed that the traffickers has renamed her as ‘Guria’ and that they have also threatened her that they would kill her should any of her family members dared to ‘irritate them’ by calling on telephone.

Fearing for his child’s safety and eager to return her home, the victim’s father went to Swarupnagar Police Station several times with a written complaint containing all the aforesaid information against the alleged traffickers. On each occasion, the police officers harassed and humiliated him and refused to take any action. This continued for about four months.

On 28 September 2011 MASUM’s District Human Rights Monitor (DHRM) accompanied with the father of the victim went to Swarupnagar Police Station to pursue and convince the police officers to register the written complaint and take actions upon it. At the police station, in the absence of Officer-in-Charge, they met one Mr Biswajit, a police officer attached with that police station who was busy in a private meeting with some people. In the chair of Duty Station In-Charge, one Mr Manoranjan Babu was sitting, wearing only one “Gamchha” (local bath towel). Mr Manoranjan was under the influence of alcohol at that time and he was preparing to go to the bathroom. He took the picture of victim girl and started using slangs to refer to the girl and her family. When the DHRM protested, some policemen entered the room and took him inside another room by force.

After repeated pleading the police accepted the written complaint of the victim’s father as First Information Report (FIR) vide Swarupnagar Police Station Case number 258/2011 dated 29 September 2011 under sections 363, 365 and 366 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860.

Mr Kartik Ch. Mondal the Sub-Inspector of Police at Swarupnagar Police Station and also the Investigating Officer of the case then started calling the victim’s father to the police station and abusing him orally, even by informing him that there would be no gain of rescuing the girl as her character would have been already ruined. The said police officer also demanded money from the victim’s father on the excuse of rescuing the victim girl from Uttar Pradesh.

Frustrated the victim’s father met Mr Ananda Chatterjee, the Officer-in-Charge, of the police station and told him the unruly behaviour of the Investigating Officer and about his reluctance to rescue the victim girl, but the Officer-in-Charge did not pay heed. As a result of this apathy of the police officers at Swarupnagar Police Station, from the Officer-in-Charge to the Investigating Officer of the case, the accused persons are still remain free and the victim girl is yet to be rescued and her helpless father is already physically down with mental agony and pain apprehending danger to his beloved daughter.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

North 24 Parganas, like many other districts of West Bengal like Murshidabad district is a place where some of the poorest people in the state live. AHRC’s local partner organisation working against child trafficking and child prostitution in Uttar Pradesh, GURIA, informs the AHRC that several of the children they rescue from the red-light areas of cities like Varanasi are kidnapped or otherwise trafficked from North 24 Parganas and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal. The AHRC has confirmed information that in many cases the criminal syndicates that kidnap or traffic children within India and also from neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh operate with the connivance of the local police. The conduct of Swarupnagar police, strongly suggests that some of the officers at this station might also be under the illegal financial clout of these criminal gangs.

In addition the conduct of the police officer, suggesting to the victim’s father that there is use of rescuing her daughter since her daughter by now might be of ruined character indicates the insensitivity of the law enforcement agencies to the plight of the trafficked children, in particular of the girl child. Further it also illuminates the alarming and misconceived notion in the country about the ‘purity’ of women and girls, should they happen to fall into the hands of criminals or even in cases where they are trafficked for sex. The attitude is due to the complete insensitivity and awareness of gender rights, in particular the unique problems the female child face, at home, and even after recovery from the hands of a criminal syndicate. This insensitivity also hampers the rescue process since the officers often misbehave with the victim upon rescue. The society also treats the victim as “responsible” for falling into the hands of the traffickers, and often blames the parents for not being careful about their girl child, and for not safeguarding her ‘purity’. Such gender-based prejudices also prevail among the educated and the rich. Such insensitivity also poses problems for the proper rehabilitation of a rescued victim, in particular, those who are poor. It is reflected even in the courts, where judicial officers who deal with victims, being insensitive to the plight of a victim of child trafficking, in particular a girl child, ask questions to the child or to its parents as if the entire incident happened due to the contributory negligence of the child or that of its parents. Due to this and the social stigma attached to the girl child being ‘polluted’ after trafficking in some cases prevents the parents from even lodging a complaint when their child goes missing.

The traffickers to their benefit exploit all of this liberally, and hence the criminal trade of children prevails in some of the poorest rural villages of India and North 24 Parganas is a shocking example to it.

SUGGESTED ACTION:
Please write to the authorities listed below asking for their urgent intervention in this case.

The AHRC is also writing a separate letter to the UN Special Rapporteur on trafficking in persons, especially women and children calling for an intervention in this case.

To support this appeal, please click here.

SAMPLE LETTER:

Dear __________,

INDIA: Kindly take action so that the police officers at Swarupnagar Police Station take actions to rescue a 13-year-old child from child traffickers

Name of victim: Amrita Sur (name changed), aged about-13 years, from Scheduled Caste community, having residence at Gokulpur village, under the jurisdiction of Swarupnagar POlice Station in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal state
Names of alleged perpetrators:
1. Mr Eklakh Hasmi, House number 03/128, Mahalla Rampur Karkhana, village and police station: Rampur Karkhana, Deoria district, post code 274001, Uttar Pradesh
2. Police officers stationed at Swarupnagar Police Station, North 24 Parganas district, West Bengal state
Date of incident: 5 January 2011 and continuously thereon
Place of incident: Gokulpur village, North 24 Parganas, West Bengal

I am writing to express my concern regarding the case reported to be, once again concerning the alleged close nexus of the West Bengal state police, this time stationed at Swarupnagar Police Station, and how they refuse to take any action to rescue a girl, from the clutches of child traffickers, despite the girl’s father’s repeated requests. I am informed that the father of the victim has informed all details that he has gathered concerning the case, including the address of the traffickers, their telephone numbers and where the girl is suspected to be held. This is a case that the West Bengal state police and the Uttar Pradesh state police need to take joint actions, without which the girl’s safety is extremely at risk.

The victim in the case is a girl named Amrita Sur (name changed), aged about-13 years, from Scheduled Caste community, having residence at Gokulpur village, under the jurisdiction of Swarupnagar POlice Station in North 24 Parganas district of West Bengal state.

I am informed that North 24 Parganas, like many other districts of West Bengal like Murshidabad district is a place where some of the poorest people in the state live. AHRC’s local partner organisation working against child trafficking and child prostitution in Uttar Pradesh, GURIA, informs the AHRC that several of the children they rescue from the red-light areas of cities like Varanasi are kidnapped or otherwise trafficked from North 24 Parganas and Murshidabad districts of West Bengal. The AHRC has confirmed information that in many cases the criminal syndicates that kidnap or traffic children within India and also from neighbouring countries like Nepal and Bangladesh operate with the connivance of the local police. The conduct of Swarupnagar police, strongly suggests that some of the officers at this station might also be under the illegal financial clout of these criminal gangs.

I therefore urge you to take the following actions in the case:

1. That the police immediately investigate the allegations in the complaint filed by the victim’s father vide General Diary Entry concerning the incident, bearing number 337 dated 7 January 2011 at Swarupnagar Police Station;
2. A separate inquiry is ordered into as to the conduct of the police officers, in particular their demand for bribe to investigate the case;
3. A judicial magistrate record the statement of the witnesses in the case, in particular that of the father of the victim;
4. The investigation to be reported on a regular basis to the Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

Yours sincerely,

—————-
PLEASE SEND YOUR LETTERS TO:

1. Ms. Mamata Banerjee
Chief Minister
Government of West Bengal
Writers’ Buildings, Kolkata – 700 001
West Bengal
INDIA
Fax: +91 33 2214 5480 / 2214 1341
Email: cm_wb@nic.in

2. Mr. Samar Ghosh, IAS
Chief Secretary
Government of West Bengal
Writers’ Buildings, Kolkata – 700001
West Bengal
INDIA
Fax: +91 33 2214 4328
Email: chiefsec@wb.gov.in

3. Mr. G. D. Gautama, IAS
Additional Chief Secretary (Home)
Government of West Bengal
Writers’ Buildings, Kolkata – 700001
West Bengal
INDIA
Fax: +91 33 22143001
Email: sechome@wb.gov.in

4. Mr. Naparajit Mukherjee, IPS
Director General & Inspector General of Police
Government of West Bengal
Writers Buildings, Kolkata-1
West Bengal
INDIA
Fax: +91 33 2214 4498 / 2214 5486
Email: dgp_westbengal@gmail.com

5. Prof. Shantha Sinha
Chairperson
National Commission for Protection of Child Rights
Government of India
5th Floor, Chanderlok Building, 36, Janpath
New Delhi – 110 001
INDIA
Fax: +91 11 23731584
Email: shantha.sinha@nic.in
Thank you.

========

Human Rights Activist Nilanjana Chakraborty tells in the National News that Tuktuki is not an isolated incident. Islamists are forcing Hindu daughters in rural West Bengal into sexual slavery. She recalls an incident when a daughter from rural West Bengal went missing, was found in Delhi later pushed into sexual slavery and when brought back to Bengal she refused to go back to her parents. An uncanny similarity to Tuktuki case. Is there a pattern , a modus-operandi of the Jihadists throughout West Bengal

See — Missing West Bengal teenager Tuktuki found: 31:29 min – 37:53 min

http://indiatoday.intoday.in/programme/lalit-modi-bassi-kejriwal-vijayendra-prasad-kiran-bedi/1/452749.html

=========

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-ranks-second-only-to-Mexico-in-abductions/articleshow/48302297.cms

India ranks second only to Mexico in abductions

Mayur Shetty,TNN | Aug 1, 2015, 01.18 AM IST

Source: WHN Media Network

Menu

BREAKING NEWS

W Bengal – where even 71 year olds get gang raped

Shame: 71-year-old gangraped in Bengal,
Read more at: http://www.oneindia.com/india/71-year-old-gangraped-in-bengal-now-another-nun-kidnapped-manhandled-mangaluru-1686260.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-17/girls-kidnapped-for-forced-marriage-suffer-rising-crime-in-india

Bloomberg: Girls Kidnapped for Forced Marriage Suffer Rising Crime in India

Lethal Equation

‘Scarce Women’

Getting Worse

Flower Drawings

Family Absconded

No Forcing

Poorest Corners

Wedding Ceremony

Ancestral Roles

Weak Enforcement

Biggest Increase

Falling Price

Residence Permitted

Pilot Project

Raid Video

Recommended

Kolkata gangrape: How the 16-year-old victim became a political football

West Bengal State Police Refuses To Help Kidnapped Girl

=========

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-ranks-second-only-to-Mexico-in-abductions/articleshow/48302297.cms

India ranks second only to Mexico in abductions

Menu

BREAKING NEWS

Shame: 71-year-old gangraped in Bengal, Read more at: http://www.oneindia.com/india/71-year-old-gangraped-in-bengal-now-another-nun-kidnapped-manhandled-mangaluru-1686260.html

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2013-12-17/girls-kidnapped-for-forced-marriage-suffer-rising-crime-in-india

Bloomberg: Girls Kidnapped for Forced Marriage Suffer Rising Crime in India

Lethal Equation

‘Scarce Women’

Getting Worse

Flower Drawings

Family Absconded

No Forcing

Poorest Corners

Wedding Ceremony

Ancestral Roles

Weak Enforcement

Biggest Increase

Falling Price

Residence Permitted

Pilot Project

Raid Video

Recommended

Kolkata gangrape: How the 16-year-old victim became a political football

West Bengal State Police Refuses To Help Kidnapped Girl

=========

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/India-ranks-second-only-to-Mexico-in-abductions/articleshow/48302297.cms

India ranks second only to Mexico in abductions

Shame: 71-year-old gangraped in Bengal,
Read more at: http://www.oneindia.com/india/71-year-old-gangraped-in-bengal-now-another-nun-kidnapped-manhandled-mangaluru-1686260.html