Unsolved abductions

While tracking links between high abduction rates and human trafficking in Assam, several questions emerge. Reports by National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) consistently show Assam figuring among much larger States like Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal in incidence of violent crimes against women. Abduction rates in Assam in 2016 were particularly worrisome, more than 81 percent of the victims being women. The oft-repeated explanation by the State police is that a large number of abduction cases are actually young girls eloping with their paramours, and even when their families catch up with them and matters are settled, the police are not informed. So the girl remains missing on police records. But the parliamentary standing committee attached to the Union Home Ministry flagged an alarming trend last July, when it observed that most abducted females remained untraced. Can it be that surrendered militants are behind many such abductions, the parliamentary panel queried. Have these former rebels linked up with human traffickers? Of the 13,413 victims abducted in Assam in 2016 as per NCRB data, as many as 10,969 were females and they remained untraced. In fact, Assam had the highest rate of 18.8 abductions per thousand persons, and was followed by Madhya Pradesh with 8,872 persons and Rajasthan with 4,880 persons abducted. The NCRB report did cause some confusion here when it claimed a steep fall in human trafficking cases, prompting activists to ask whether trafficking cases were being recorded as abductions. So when the parliamentary panel wondered whether some surrendered militants were hand-in-glove with human trafficking gangs, further questions arose as to how successful government efforts have been to rehabilitate them.

Apart from stressing the need to keep close tabs on former militants, the panel also recommended inter-State investigations to get to the bottom of why women and girls were being abducted in Assam at such high rates. Interestingly, in that same report on the security situation in Northeast States, the panel noted that Central funds for police force modernisation had been reduced from Rs 180 crore in 2013-14 to Rs 46 crore in 2016-17. This surely gives an indication of skewed Central priorities, even as NE region remains poorly policed while militant outfits keep up significant levels of recruitment and extortion activities. On its part, the Union Home Ministry in its action taken report (ATR) claimed there was a mechanism on ground to monitor the activities of surrendered militants. But with peace talks hardly making headway and some politicians maintaining close links with former rebels, how effectively they are being monitored remains a moot question. Large numbers of females going missing in Assam and remaining untraced is a distressing part of an overall bleak picture. What is more, conviction rates in Assam are poor (in the 5-10 percent range in 2016, as per NCRB data); this can be compared to conviction rates of over 88 percent in Mizoram and over 67 percent in Meghalaya. Other studies have time and corroborated this picture, like the one by ‘Save the Children’ last year which found that over half the adolescent females feel unsafe in public spaces in Assam, or the gender vulnerability index (GVI) devised by child rights NGO ‘Plan India’ which placed Assam 24th among 30 States in terms of safety/protection, poverty, health and education of girl child. It is thus a complex picture needing intervention at various levels, but for law enforcers, they can make a difference by seriously taking up cases of missing women. We need to spare a thought for their families gnawed by endless trauma — the social costs for the State are very high.