Mumbai is increasingly becoming an unsafe city for children with 241 cases of child sexual abuse already reported in 2016. Data collated by the Mumbai police has revealed that the numbers are at an all time high for the first quarter of a year.
According to data collected by the Juvenile Aid Protection Unit (JAPU), which keeps track of child sexual abuse cases, January has seen the highest cases with 96, followed by 73 in February and 72 in March. Compared to last year, 2016 has seen a 31 per cent increase.
Officials said that the numbers could be high because of more awareness being spread among people. “More and more people are bravely coming up to report sexual abuse cases of children. Unlike the situation earlier, parents and relatives no longer want to keep such incidents under wraps fearing society’s negative reaction. Instead, they want to report such cases so that the accused can be nabbed,” said a senior police officer.
Interestingly, the data further reveals that the number of number of cases registered under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act has nearly doubled in the last two years. The number from 2013 to 2015 has jumped by 90 percent with 2013 reporting 422 cases and 803 in 2015.
“We saw children as young as two and two-and-a-half years being sexually assaulted. In most of the cases, the accused were youngsters in the age group of 24-28 years and either relatives or neighbours of the victims,” said the officer.
The zone-wise break up of for 2016 shows that with 57 cases, zone 11 has reported the maximum number of such cases. In the second place stands zone six (Chembur, Trombay and Deonar) with 25 cases and zone 12 (Aarey, Dindoshi, Kurar and Dahisar) with 24 cases of child sexual abuse. “These zones always report high number of sexual assault cases on children because large part of the area consists of slums. In most of the cases that are registered, the victims are children below five-years-old,” said an officer at JAPU. In 2015, zone 11 saw 142 cases and zone six reported 96 cases. “This year’s numbers for the first three months are already higher than the total number of cases registered last year. We have also begun to conduct sex education classes regularly and also teach children about good touch and bad touch,” said the senior officer.
