Women Abduction Rate highest in Assam: Parliamentary Panel on Home Affairs

Women Abduction Rate highest in Assam: Parliamentary Panel on Home Affairs

STAFF REPORTER

GUWAHATI, July 22: What can be termed as a dangerous trend of a possible nexus between abductors and human traffickers, over 80 per cent of abduction victims in Assam have been found to be women.

A department-related Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs, headed by Congress MP P. Chidambaram, in the latest report on the security situation in the North East has recommended that there is a need to institute an inter-state investigation to find out the causes behind extremely high rate of kidnappings of women in Assam.

The Parliamentary Committee is deeply worried to note that a large number of victims who were kidnapped in Assam before and during 2016 are yet to be recovered. “Even more worrisome is the fact that a large majority, at more than 81 per cent, of victims are women,” the report says.

The parliamentary panel’s report which was tabled in both Houses of the Parliament on July 19 during the ongoing monsoon session, has observed that the large-scale abduction of women in Assam may point towards a connection between such abductions and human trafficking. The panel asked the Union Home Ministry to submit a detailed status note about the action taken to recover such victims.

On other hand, the report further said the Parliamentary Committee is disconcerted to note that Assam has the highest rate of violent crimes, kidnappings and abductions, among all the states.

Even though the Parliamentary Committee accepts that the insurgency-related instances of kidnappings and extortions may be on a decline, there is a general rise in the instances of such crimes is worrying. The committee is perplexed that despite a waning trend in insurgency, violent crimes and kidnappings have been on a rise.

According to the Parliamentary Committee, the number of kidnappings by insurgents shows a marked decline from 94 in 2014 to 14 in 2016. But the number of abductions, in general, as reported by the National Crime Record Bureau in the ‘Crime in India-2016’ report, shows a significant rise during this period from 4824 in 2014 to 6128 in 2016.

The data given in the Parliamentary Committee report also shows that with a rate of 18.8 kidnappings and abductions per thousand persons in 2016, Assam had the highest rate of kidnappings and abductions among all the states across the country. The State also had the highest rate of violent crimes among all the states in 2016.

Recommending sustained operations by police and security forces to trace and recover the victims of kidnappings and abductions, the Parliamentary Committee has suspected that the rise in number of general may be due to poor rehabilitation and settlement of former militants who out of frustration may be indulging in such crimes for ransom.

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