Minister: Juvenile courts to be set up in all districtsHT CorrespondentJabalpur, February 25, 2007
WOMAN AND Child Development and Social Justice Minister Kusum Mahdele said on Saturday that the government would soon open juvenile courts in each district for speedy disposal of cases related to children. She said the number of juvenile courts in the State is insufficient at present and more courts are needed for disposal of cases.
The minister said that Bal Bhawan, akin to Bhopal, would be opened in Jabalpur in April. She said it is planned to open Bal Bhawan at the divisional headquarters, where children would receive training in sports, music, arts and would also be taught science and other subjects.Mahdele told the media persons that the beneficiaries under the social security and old age pension schemes would get the amount by the fifth of every month. He said her department had issued instructions in this regard to the authorities.
She disclosed that the government was contemplating a plan to reserve 50 per cent seats of supervisor cadre in Anganwadi for women.
To a query about promoting Anganwadi workers on the post of supervisor, she said the government would fill up 50 per cent posts of supervisor through Anganwadi workers for which they will have to qualify the test conducted by the Professional Examination Board.
Mahdele announced that 75 per cent amount for construction of hostel for working women and the students in the campus of Government Mankunwar Bai College here would be provided by the government.
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Monday, February 05, 2007
India’s judiciary seeks to burnish its reputation with some belated guilty verdicts
By Parwini Zora and Kranti Kumara – World Socialist Web Site
India’s State High Courts have recently delivered guilty verdicts in a number of high profile cases arising from brazen violent crimes committed over a decade ago by wealthy and politically well-connected individuals. Those convicted include a cabinet minister in India’s Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, a sitting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, the son of a senior police commissioner, and the son of a wealthy Congress Party leader.
The guilty verdicts have elicited a torrent of favorable media commentary, with the press congratulating itself for stoking and maintaining public interest in these cases and lauding the courts for having the integrity and courage to convict the rich and powerful. Kushwant Singh, one of the country’s best known media commentators, hailed the recent convictions for “beginning . . . the process of restoration of faith in our judicial system.”
“Convictions of Shibu Soren, Navjot Sidhu, Santosh Singh, Manu Sharma, Sharda Jain, Sanjay Dutt and others showed that no matter how important or celebrated a person, he or she is not above the law,” Singh wrote. “We have much to thank Justice R.S. Sodhi for. Credit is also due to our media; to TV channels for reporting the public outrage at the miscarriage of justice and the press for its sustained pressure to bring criminals to book. I hope the process will continue.”
That such comments can be made attests to how widespread is the public perception that the justice system is subject to financial and political manipulation and shot through with class bias. They also indicate that India’s elite—which has increasingly used the courts to suppress opposition to its neo-liberal socio-economic reform program and to strengthen proprietary and managerial rights—fears that the ability of some its own to literally get away with murder is undermining public faith in the judiciary and thereby endangering bourgeois rule.
A handful of exemplary convictions
In the first of a series of such rulings, the Delhi High Court on October 30, 2006 reversed an acquittal by a lower court and sentenced Santosh Kumar Singh, son of a senior police commissioner, to death for the brutal 1996 rape and murder of a 22-year old female student, Priyadarshini Mattoo.
On Dec. 5, 2006 the same court sentenced Shibu Soren, the Union Coal Minister and leader of the tribal-based political party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and four accomplices to life imprisonment for kidnapping and murdering Soren’s associate Shashinath Jha in 1994. Soren and Jha had had a falling-out over the divvying up of a massive bribe of 50 million rupees ($1.67 million US at the 1994 exchange rate) that had been given to Soren and his cronies in the JMM by the then-ruling Congress Party for propping up the government in parliament a year earlier.
Under India’s penal code Shibu Soren will have to serve a minimum of 14 years in prison before becoming eligible for release.
In another case, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on December 24, 2006 overturned a not-guilty verdict of a lower court and pronounced Navjot Singh Sidhu, a member of the Lok Sabha belonging to the Hindu-supremacist BJP, guilty of “culpable homicide” for beating Gurnam Singh to death in 1988 in a reputed case of road-rage. Sidhu was given a 3-year prison term and fined 100,000 rupees ($2,200 US). A particularly uncouth and coarse person, Sidhu turned to politics after retiring from cricket. He also hosts a television program.
Even the paltry sentence on Sidhu has been suspended, allowing him to appeal his sentence in the Indian Supreme Court. Neither Sidhu nor Soren are losing any sleep over their sentences. While Shibu Soren did step down as a Union Minister, he still retains his Lok Sabha seat. Soren can prevent his disqualification from parliament by filing an appeal within 3 months. If Soren is unable to obtain bail pending his appeal, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha may have to make arrangements for this convicted murderer to perform his parliamentary duties from jail.
According to news reports, Soren is being treated as a VIP in prison, with the jail authorities attending to his every demand. Navjot Sidhu, on the other hand, has resigned from the Lok Sabha, but just a couple of weeks after his sentencing he was back in his role as a television host and is currently acting in a 6-part reality TV series. More importantly, the BJP has named Sidhu its candidate for the Lok Sabha by-election necessitated by his own resignation.
The convictions of Soren and Sidhu are not surprising given that the Lok Sabha has become the domicile for scores of venal thug-politicians, who brazenly traffic in political influence and rally public support by making crude populist appeals to caste, religious-communal and ethnic identities. According to one study by a non-governmental organization, over 90 members of the 543-seat Lok Sabha, including 10 members of ministerial rank in the current UPA government, currently face serious criminal charges, including rape, extortion and murder.
In another prominent case that had caused widespread public outrage, the Delhi High Court on December 20, 2006 overruled a previous lower court ruling and sentenced Manu Sharma—the son of a prominent and wealthy Congress Party politician, Vinod Sharma—to life imprisonment for murdering the model Jessica Lal in 1999. Lal, who was working as a bar hostess at a private party of Delhi socialites, was murdered by Manu Sharma for refusing him further drinks after the bar had closed. This case triggered a public uproar when Manu Sharma was acquitted in February 2006 because, according to dozens of witnesses, he had brazenly shot Jessica Lal in the head at point-blank range.
Despite the prosecution’s call for Sharma to be sentenced to death, the Delhi High Court ruled that “justice would be satisfied if we award the sentence of imprisonment for life to Siddharth Vashishtha alias Manu Sharma.”
According to press reports Vinod Sharma is seeking the services of prominent attorneys to file an appeal with the Indian Supreme Court. As a matter of principle, the World Socialist Web Site opposes the death penalty, but it is nevertheless instructive to contrast the court’s magnanimity towards Manu Sharma with its baying for the blood of Mohammed Afzal, a minor accomplice—if even that—in the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. (See “India: Stop the state murder of Mohammed Afzal”.)
Elite concerns over a loss of legitimacy India’s judicial system has long been notorious for the unequal treatment it accords the poor and the well-to-do—for the corruption of the police and courts, the official indifference to crimes committed against poor and lower-caste people (as for example the recent spate of disappearances in Noida) and the hostility of the police to the rights of the accused.
The flagrant inequities in the judicial system are exemplified by the fact that poor people are often kept in jail for months, and frequently years, awaiting trial for minor offenses, while the rich and powerful are able to obtain “anticipatory bail”—a ruling granting them bail should they be charged—thus allowing them to avoid the indignity of being arrested and having to wait in jail for a bail hearing to secure their release. (See: “Fifty-four years in jail without trial: the plight of prison inmates in India”.)
Aware that the judicial system is little respected, if not held in outright disrepute, by much of the population, and also concerned about allaying investors fears that they will be hard pressed to enforce their contracts due to the chronic backlog in the adjudication of court cases, prominent figures in the government and judiciary have called repeatedly in recent years for action to “clean-up” and otherwise improve India’s legal system.
In a speech in London in June 12, 2003, the attorney general of India at the time delivered a damning indictment of India’s criminal justice system: “The criminal justice system is on the verge of collapse. Because justice is not dispensed speedily, people have come to believe that there is no such thing as justice in courts.
“This perception has caused many a potential litigant who has been wronged to settle out of court on terms which are unfair to him or to secure justice by taking the law into his own hands or by recourse to a parallel mafia-dominated system of ‘justice’ that has sprung up in metropolitan centers such as Mumbai.
“The gravity of this development cannot be underestimated. Justice delayed will not only be justice denied, it will be the Rule of Law destroyed.”
The calls from within the elite for measures against judicial corruption and inefficiency, for an effort to revive public confidence in India’s legal system, must also be see within the context of the pivotal role that the courts are playing in the bourgeoisie’s drive to make India a cheap-labor producer for the world capitalist market.
India’s courts, and especially its apex court, the Supreme Court, have moved in recent years to criminalize working-class and popular dissent with a spate of anti-democratic rulings.
To name but two of the most significant, in the summer of 2003 India’s Supreme Court sided with the Tamilnadu state government when it dismissed over 200,000 public employees who had gone on strike demanding better pay and benefits. The court found that public sector workers have no inherent right to strike and even suggested that the state would be within its constitutional limits to outlaw strikes by all workers. In an unprecedented February 2006 ruling, the Supreme Court banned all public discussion on whether the toxic-laden, de-commissioned French Aircraft carrier “Le Clemenceau” should be permitted to be dismantled at an Indian ship-breaking yard.
Under conditions where India’s government has often been forced to postpone enactment of neo-liberal reforms, especially in regards to labor laws, due to popular pressure, the courts through various rulings have moved to expand the powers and prerogatives of employers to discipline and dismiss workers. Recently, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that apprentices or trainees don’t have any rights during their training period, even if that period is prolonged, and can be fired without penalty even if they routinely perform work that a regular employee performs.
The recent exemplary rulings in a handful of high-profile criminal cases and the push from within the elite for reform of India’s judiciary will not—the claims of the press notwithstanding—make India’s legal system more just and democratic. Rather they are aimed at bolstering the legitimacy and efficiency of the legal system so as to make it a more effective instrument of class oppression.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year tied his call for the speedier dispensing of justice with the need to bring the courts more in line with his and previous governments’ pro-big business “economic reforms.”
One further point should be made: while the press has been lauding the courts for the recent convictions of a number of brazen upper-class criminals, those responsible for far greater and more politically-significant crimes—crimes which led to the deaths of thousands and in which leading politicians and police authorities were culpable—the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, the 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya and the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, remain free. And about this gross injustice the corporate media remains almost completely silent.
- World Socialist Web Site -
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/4402
India’s State High Courts have recently delivered guilty verdicts in a number of high profile cases arising from brazen violent crimes committed over a decade ago by wealthy and politically well-connected individuals. Those convicted include a cabinet minister in India’s Congress Party-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, a sitting Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP, the son of a senior police commissioner, and the son of a wealthy Congress Party leader.
The guilty verdicts have elicited a torrent of favorable media commentary, with the press congratulating itself for stoking and maintaining public interest in these cases and lauding the courts for having the integrity and courage to convict the rich and powerful. Kushwant Singh, one of the country’s best known media commentators, hailed the recent convictions for “beginning . . . the process of restoration of faith in our judicial system.”
“Convictions of Shibu Soren, Navjot Sidhu, Santosh Singh, Manu Sharma, Sharda Jain, Sanjay Dutt and others showed that no matter how important or celebrated a person, he or she is not above the law,” Singh wrote. “We have much to thank Justice R.S. Sodhi for. Credit is also due to our media; to TV channels for reporting the public outrage at the miscarriage of justice and the press for its sustained pressure to bring criminals to book. I hope the process will continue.”
That such comments can be made attests to how widespread is the public perception that the justice system is subject to financial and political manipulation and shot through with class bias. They also indicate that India’s elite—which has increasingly used the courts to suppress opposition to its neo-liberal socio-economic reform program and to strengthen proprietary and managerial rights—fears that the ability of some its own to literally get away with murder is undermining public faith in the judiciary and thereby endangering bourgeois rule.
A handful of exemplary convictions
In the first of a series of such rulings, the Delhi High Court on October 30, 2006 reversed an acquittal by a lower court and sentenced Santosh Kumar Singh, son of a senior police commissioner, to death for the brutal 1996 rape and murder of a 22-year old female student, Priyadarshini Mattoo.
On Dec. 5, 2006 the same court sentenced Shibu Soren, the Union Coal Minister and leader of the tribal-based political party Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) and four accomplices to life imprisonment for kidnapping and murdering Soren’s associate Shashinath Jha in 1994. Soren and Jha had had a falling-out over the divvying up of a massive bribe of 50 million rupees ($1.67 million US at the 1994 exchange rate) that had been given to Soren and his cronies in the JMM by the then-ruling Congress Party for propping up the government in parliament a year earlier.
Under India’s penal code Shibu Soren will have to serve a minimum of 14 years in prison before becoming eligible for release.
In another case, the Punjab and Haryana High Court on December 24, 2006 overturned a not-guilty verdict of a lower court and pronounced Navjot Singh Sidhu, a member of the Lok Sabha belonging to the Hindu-supremacist BJP, guilty of “culpable homicide” for beating Gurnam Singh to death in 1988 in a reputed case of road-rage. Sidhu was given a 3-year prison term and fined 100,000 rupees ($2,200 US). A particularly uncouth and coarse person, Sidhu turned to politics after retiring from cricket. He also hosts a television program.
Even the paltry sentence on Sidhu has been suspended, allowing him to appeal his sentence in the Indian Supreme Court. Neither Sidhu nor Soren are losing any sleep over their sentences. While Shibu Soren did step down as a Union Minister, he still retains his Lok Sabha seat. Soren can prevent his disqualification from parliament by filing an appeal within 3 months. If Soren is unable to obtain bail pending his appeal, the Speaker of the Lok Sabha may have to make arrangements for this convicted murderer to perform his parliamentary duties from jail.
According to news reports, Soren is being treated as a VIP in prison, with the jail authorities attending to his every demand. Navjot Sidhu, on the other hand, has resigned from the Lok Sabha, but just a couple of weeks after his sentencing he was back in his role as a television host and is currently acting in a 6-part reality TV series. More importantly, the BJP has named Sidhu its candidate for the Lok Sabha by-election necessitated by his own resignation.
The convictions of Soren and Sidhu are not surprising given that the Lok Sabha has become the domicile for scores of venal thug-politicians, who brazenly traffic in political influence and rally public support by making crude populist appeals to caste, religious-communal and ethnic identities. According to one study by a non-governmental organization, over 90 members of the 543-seat Lok Sabha, including 10 members of ministerial rank in the current UPA government, currently face serious criminal charges, including rape, extortion and murder.
In another prominent case that had caused widespread public outrage, the Delhi High Court on December 20, 2006 overruled a previous lower court ruling and sentenced Manu Sharma—the son of a prominent and wealthy Congress Party politician, Vinod Sharma—to life imprisonment for murdering the model Jessica Lal in 1999. Lal, who was working as a bar hostess at a private party of Delhi socialites, was murdered by Manu Sharma for refusing him further drinks after the bar had closed. This case triggered a public uproar when Manu Sharma was acquitted in February 2006 because, according to dozens of witnesses, he had brazenly shot Jessica Lal in the head at point-blank range.
Despite the prosecution’s call for Sharma to be sentenced to death, the Delhi High Court ruled that “justice would be satisfied if we award the sentence of imprisonment for life to Siddharth Vashishtha alias Manu Sharma.”
According to press reports Vinod Sharma is seeking the services of prominent attorneys to file an appeal with the Indian Supreme Court. As a matter of principle, the World Socialist Web Site opposes the death penalty, but it is nevertheless instructive to contrast the court’s magnanimity towards Manu Sharma with its baying for the blood of Mohammed Afzal, a minor accomplice—if even that—in the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. (See “India: Stop the state murder of Mohammed Afzal”.)
Elite concerns over a loss of legitimacy India’s judicial system has long been notorious for the unequal treatment it accords the poor and the well-to-do—for the corruption of the police and courts, the official indifference to crimes committed against poor and lower-caste people (as for example the recent spate of disappearances in Noida) and the hostility of the police to the rights of the accused.
The flagrant inequities in the judicial system are exemplified by the fact that poor people are often kept in jail for months, and frequently years, awaiting trial for minor offenses, while the rich and powerful are able to obtain “anticipatory bail”—a ruling granting them bail should they be charged—thus allowing them to avoid the indignity of being arrested and having to wait in jail for a bail hearing to secure their release. (See: “Fifty-four years in jail without trial: the plight of prison inmates in India”.)
Aware that the judicial system is little respected, if not held in outright disrepute, by much of the population, and also concerned about allaying investors fears that they will be hard pressed to enforce their contracts due to the chronic backlog in the adjudication of court cases, prominent figures in the government and judiciary have called repeatedly in recent years for action to “clean-up” and otherwise improve India’s legal system.
In a speech in London in June 12, 2003, the attorney general of India at the time delivered a damning indictment of India’s criminal justice system: “The criminal justice system is on the verge of collapse. Because justice is not dispensed speedily, people have come to believe that there is no such thing as justice in courts.
“This perception has caused many a potential litigant who has been wronged to settle out of court on terms which are unfair to him or to secure justice by taking the law into his own hands or by recourse to a parallel mafia-dominated system of ‘justice’ that has sprung up in metropolitan centers such as Mumbai.
“The gravity of this development cannot be underestimated. Justice delayed will not only be justice denied, it will be the Rule of Law destroyed.”
The calls from within the elite for measures against judicial corruption and inefficiency, for an effort to revive public confidence in India’s legal system, must also be see within the context of the pivotal role that the courts are playing in the bourgeoisie’s drive to make India a cheap-labor producer for the world capitalist market.
India’s courts, and especially its apex court, the Supreme Court, have moved in recent years to criminalize working-class and popular dissent with a spate of anti-democratic rulings.
To name but two of the most significant, in the summer of 2003 India’s Supreme Court sided with the Tamilnadu state government when it dismissed over 200,000 public employees who had gone on strike demanding better pay and benefits. The court found that public sector workers have no inherent right to strike and even suggested that the state would be within its constitutional limits to outlaw strikes by all workers. In an unprecedented February 2006 ruling, the Supreme Court banned all public discussion on whether the toxic-laden, de-commissioned French Aircraft carrier “Le Clemenceau” should be permitted to be dismantled at an Indian ship-breaking yard.
Under conditions where India’s government has often been forced to postpone enactment of neo-liberal reforms, especially in regards to labor laws, due to popular pressure, the courts through various rulings have moved to expand the powers and prerogatives of employers to discipline and dismiss workers. Recently, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that apprentices or trainees don’t have any rights during their training period, even if that period is prolonged, and can be fired without penalty even if they routinely perform work that a regular employee performs.
The recent exemplary rulings in a handful of high-profile criminal cases and the push from within the elite for reform of India’s judiciary will not—the claims of the press notwithstanding—make India’s legal system more just and democratic. Rather they are aimed at bolstering the legitimacy and efficiency of the legal system so as to make it a more effective instrument of class oppression.
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh last year tied his call for the speedier dispensing of justice with the need to bring the courts more in line with his and previous governments’ pro-big business “economic reforms.”
One further point should be made: while the press has been lauding the courts for the recent convictions of a number of brazen upper-class criminals, those responsible for far greater and more politically-significant crimes—crimes which led to the deaths of thousands and in which leading politicians and police authorities were culpable—the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi, the 1992 razing of the Babri Masjid mosque in Ayodhya and the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat, remain free. And about this gross injustice the corporate media remains almost completely silent.
- World Socialist Web Site -
http://www.asiantribune.com/index.php?q=node/4402
India Sees Thousands Of Children Missing Thanks To Neglect In Police
February 05, 2007 21:44 PM
NEW DELHI, Feb 5 (Bernama) -- When India's senior police officers check the crime charts, they will frown upon increase in thefts, murders and even chain snatching incidents but seldom upon the number of missing persons, Xinhua reported Monday.It was no wonder that the public and media were so shocked when the serial killing of about 40 children was revealed early January in Noida, a satellite town of Indian capital New Delhi known for its large middle-class population.According to the police investigation, two prime suspects, a businessman and his servant, seduced the children from an urban village near their house, sexually abused and killed them. They dismembered the bodies and buried them in a dried drainage behind the house.People were asking how come the local police had been not aware of the crime when worried parents in the village kept filing complaints about their missing children in the past two years.The case seems lead to the fact that missing cases are so low on policing priority.A National Human Rights Commission report said that 45,000 children go missing every year but the Women and Child Development Ministry was quoted as saying it could be thrice as much.Some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social workers said that official estimates are based only on police complaints and the actual numbers may be close to 1 million.In Delhi there are 21,561 people reported missing including nearly 16,000 children. Provided that the city has other 50,000 homeless it is a frightening scenario.But India has no official website or data base for the missing people. The only public source of information seems to be Doordarshan, India's public TV channel, or personally placed ads in media.There is very little emphasis on locating missing children by the police or even the society, said Kiran Bedi, director-general of the Delhi police in charge of training.More attention will be paid on finding a stolen car than finding a human being because the former involves a pressure group and the insurance company, said Sagar Hudda, Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police.And missing children from poor and powerless families will face the most neglect from the police.The victims in the serial killing in Noida all came from poor families of migrant workers.In the same city it took the police only five days to save the three-year-old son of the chief executive of Adobe India who was kidnapped for ransom in November last year.The police are most reluctant to register First Information Reports (FIR) for kidnapping till a ransom demand is made. But this rarely happens in the case of poor children who may have been lifted for begging or prostitution or other violation like what happened in the Noida killing.India has adopted several laws on protection of children including the freshly passed Child Marriage Act, Domestic Violence Act and child labour protection Act but so far no law on missing children.To cope with the problem, the Women and Child Development Ministry is considering founding a national commission for children which will exclusively cater to complaints related to children with similar legal power with the National Commission for Women
http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news.php?id=245230
NEW DELHI, Feb 5 (Bernama) -- When India's senior police officers check the crime charts, they will frown upon increase in thefts, murders and even chain snatching incidents but seldom upon the number of missing persons, Xinhua reported Monday.It was no wonder that the public and media were so shocked when the serial killing of about 40 children was revealed early January in Noida, a satellite town of Indian capital New Delhi known for its large middle-class population.According to the police investigation, two prime suspects, a businessman and his servant, seduced the children from an urban village near their house, sexually abused and killed them. They dismembered the bodies and buried them in a dried drainage behind the house.People were asking how come the local police had been not aware of the crime when worried parents in the village kept filing complaints about their missing children in the past two years.The case seems lead to the fact that missing cases are so low on policing priority.A National Human Rights Commission report said that 45,000 children go missing every year but the Women and Child Development Ministry was quoted as saying it could be thrice as much.Some non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and social workers said that official estimates are based only on police complaints and the actual numbers may be close to 1 million.In Delhi there are 21,561 people reported missing including nearly 16,000 children. Provided that the city has other 50,000 homeless it is a frightening scenario.But India has no official website or data base for the missing people. The only public source of information seems to be Doordarshan, India's public TV channel, or personally placed ads in media.There is very little emphasis on locating missing children by the police or even the society, said Kiran Bedi, director-general of the Delhi police in charge of training.More attention will be paid on finding a stolen car than finding a human being because the former involves a pressure group and the insurance company, said Sagar Hudda, Joint Commissioner of Delhi Police.And missing children from poor and powerless families will face the most neglect from the police.The victims in the serial killing in Noida all came from poor families of migrant workers.In the same city it took the police only five days to save the three-year-old son of the chief executive of Adobe India who was kidnapped for ransom in November last year.The police are most reluctant to register First Information Reports (FIR) for kidnapping till a ransom demand is made. But this rarely happens in the case of poor children who may have been lifted for begging or prostitution or other violation like what happened in the Noida killing.India has adopted several laws on protection of children including the freshly passed Child Marriage Act, Domestic Violence Act and child labour protection Act but so far no law on missing children.To cope with the problem, the Women and Child Development Ministry is considering founding a national commission for children which will exclusively cater to complaints related to children with similar legal power with the National Commission for Women
http://www.bernama.com.my/bernama/v3/news.php?id=245230
Saturday, February 03, 2007
An eye-opener for police
Much more needs to be done to sensitise cops entrusted with the task of locating missing persons, says DEVESH K. PANDEY
The Hindu 3, February
The Noida killings have acted as an eye-opener for the Delhi police. Although they have initiated a series of measures to ensure that such gory incidents do not take place in the Capital, it seems much more needs to be done to sensitise police personnel who are entrusted with the task of locating missing persons. To begin with, the Delhi police have shown great alacrity in taking steps to send across a strong message to the public that their children are well protected here. Following a hue and cry over the Nithari killings in Noida, the top brass not only sought the updated data on missing persons but also directed the Deputy Commissioners of Police to keep track of pending cases of missing children and strictly adhere to relevant standing orders.
The most significant step has been the formulation of District Missing Persons Units (DMPU). The objective of this unit -- which is headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police -- is to constantly monitor complaints of missing persons in coordination with the Missing Persons Squad and the Crime Branch. While the DMPUs have now become functional and reports about missing persons are being meticulously tracked and recorded, some police officers feel that there is a need to adopt a judicious approach so that time and effort are not wasted on those missing people who have either been located or in whose disappearance there is no criminal angle involved.
In Delhi, the police have an institutionalised mechanism in place for enquiring into cases of missing persons. Going by the book, on receipt of any such complaint the police are required to flash a message to all the police stations relaying a description of the missing person. Hue and cry notices are then taken out and advertisements published and telecast to seek information from the public. In the case of missing juveniles, there is a standing order to compulsorily register a case of abduction if the child is not located within a short span of time.
Senior officers agree that despite these efforts there are chances that instances of organised crime like the Nithari killings may go undetected if cases of missing persons, especially juveniles, are not investigated on a priority basis. This can also happen in the absence of a sound ground-level intelligence network.
A case in point is a trend noticed in the late 1970s when there was a sudden jump in incidents of children going missing from different parts of South Delhi. Responding to the situation, the police had constituted teams to investigate the matter and caught hold of criminals who abducted the children. As it turned out, the abducted children were being forced into begging.
As this case illustrates, there is a need to take every "missing" complaint with all the seriousness it deserves because what may appear to be simple cases of "elopement" or "people going away out of their own choice'' can end up turning into Nithari-like episodes.
The Hindu 3, February
The Noida killings have acted as an eye-opener for the Delhi police. Although they have initiated a series of measures to ensure that such gory incidents do not take place in the Capital, it seems much more needs to be done to sensitise police personnel who are entrusted with the task of locating missing persons. To begin with, the Delhi police have shown great alacrity in taking steps to send across a strong message to the public that their children are well protected here. Following a hue and cry over the Nithari killings in Noida, the top brass not only sought the updated data on missing persons but also directed the Deputy Commissioners of Police to keep track of pending cases of missing children and strictly adhere to relevant standing orders.
The most significant step has been the formulation of District Missing Persons Units (DMPU). The objective of this unit -- which is headed by an Assistant Commissioner of Police -- is to constantly monitor complaints of missing persons in coordination with the Missing Persons Squad and the Crime Branch. While the DMPUs have now become functional and reports about missing persons are being meticulously tracked and recorded, some police officers feel that there is a need to adopt a judicious approach so that time and effort are not wasted on those missing people who have either been located or in whose disappearance there is no criminal angle involved.
In Delhi, the police have an institutionalised mechanism in place for enquiring into cases of missing persons. Going by the book, on receipt of any such complaint the police are required to flash a message to all the police stations relaying a description of the missing person. Hue and cry notices are then taken out and advertisements published and telecast to seek information from the public. In the case of missing juveniles, there is a standing order to compulsorily register a case of abduction if the child is not located within a short span of time.
Senior officers agree that despite these efforts there are chances that instances of organised crime like the Nithari killings may go undetected if cases of missing persons, especially juveniles, are not investigated on a priority basis. This can also happen in the absence of a sound ground-level intelligence network.
A case in point is a trend noticed in the late 1970s when there was a sudden jump in incidents of children going missing from different parts of South Delhi. Responding to the situation, the police had constituted teams to investigate the matter and caught hold of criminals who abducted the children. As it turned out, the abducted children were being forced into begging.
As this case illustrates, there is a need to take every "missing" complaint with all the seriousness it deserves because what may appear to be simple cases of "elopement" or "people going away out of their own choice'' can end up turning into Nithari-like episodes.
Friday, February 02, 2007
More staff for Juvenile Justice Board sought
The Hindu Jan 31,2007
BANGALORE: After the knee jerk reaction of suspending officials at the observation home at Madivala, the Government seems to be finally taking notice of the many underlying problems in the juvenile justice system that have emerged after the escape of 46 children.
A meeting was held here on Tuesday by child rights organisations and government officials where key recommendations have been made.
The strength of the staff, which stood at nine for 76 children when the break-out took place, was held to be grossly inadequate, for both the care and control of the children.
"At least four probationary officers, 10 guards and four wardens have been recommended for a better functioning of the observation homes," says Arlene Manoharan, research officer at the Centre for the Child and Law at National Law School of India University.
For better functioning of the Juvenile Justice Board, more administrative staff and a permanent office have been recommended.
Since one of the problems faced at the observation home included the younger children sharing space with older ones accused of more serious offences, segregation of the children based on their ages and offences has been recommended. To this effect, separate living arrangements to house the ones accused of more serious offences has been proposed.
A multi-disciplinary committee could take on this responsibility of classification. The committee could also provide the magistrate with informed opinion on the bail and final orders of the children, says Ms. Manoharan.
The other areas of concern included lack of legal and psychological assistance provided to the children. The government extends no legal help to the children, which is handled almost solely by Empowerment of Children and Human Right's Organisation (ECHO). Similarly, virtually no government provided facility for regular counselling exists, which is handled at the Observation centre largely by two non-government organisations, ECHO and BOSCO at the moment. A mental health team has been proposed to help children through their stay at the observation home.
Police reforms
Father Anthony Sebastian, Director, ECHO, believes that the Special Juvenile Police Unit needs to be strengthened, as a step toward reform of the police system.
"Only three divisions have such a unit, where a special officer is employed to look at these cases in a child-friendly way. We need all the city divisions to have such a unit, and also to increase the number of officers from one to three. We need more women officers to take charge of cases where a girl child is involved," he said.
The suspension of the superintendent was unanimously believed to be unnecessary. "Everyone objects to the suspension of Kamalamma. She was one of the few staff members who was able to handle the children in a sensitive and effective manner. She happened to be out, on duty, when the break-out happened," Fr. Anthony said.
BANGALORE: After the knee jerk reaction of suspending officials at the observation home at Madivala, the Government seems to be finally taking notice of the many underlying problems in the juvenile justice system that have emerged after the escape of 46 children.
A meeting was held here on Tuesday by child rights organisations and government officials where key recommendations have been made.
The strength of the staff, which stood at nine for 76 children when the break-out took place, was held to be grossly inadequate, for both the care and control of the children.
"At least four probationary officers, 10 guards and four wardens have been recommended for a better functioning of the observation homes," says Arlene Manoharan, research officer at the Centre for the Child and Law at National Law School of India University.
For better functioning of the Juvenile Justice Board, more administrative staff and a permanent office have been recommended.
Since one of the problems faced at the observation home included the younger children sharing space with older ones accused of more serious offences, segregation of the children based on their ages and offences has been recommended. To this effect, separate living arrangements to house the ones accused of more serious offences has been proposed.
A multi-disciplinary committee could take on this responsibility of classification. The committee could also provide the magistrate with informed opinion on the bail and final orders of the children, says Ms. Manoharan.
The other areas of concern included lack of legal and psychological assistance provided to the children. The government extends no legal help to the children, which is handled almost solely by Empowerment of Children and Human Right's Organisation (ECHO). Similarly, virtually no government provided facility for regular counselling exists, which is handled at the Observation centre largely by two non-government organisations, ECHO and BOSCO at the moment. A mental health team has been proposed to help children through their stay at the observation home.
Police reforms
Father Anthony Sebastian, Director, ECHO, believes that the Special Juvenile Police Unit needs to be strengthened, as a step toward reform of the police system.
"Only three divisions have such a unit, where a special officer is employed to look at these cases in a child-friendly way. We need all the city divisions to have such a unit, and also to increase the number of officers from one to three. We need more women officers to take charge of cases where a girl child is involved," he said.
The suspension of the superintendent was unanimously believed to be unnecessary. "Everyone objects to the suspension of Kamalamma. She was one of the few staff members who was able to handle the children in a sensitive and effective manner. She happened to be out, on duty, when the break-out happened," Fr. Anthony said.
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