GUEST COLUMN: When Will CBI Act Independently In India?

By Ashrafuddin Sharfi (Guest Writer)

We know about the CBI’s past flip flops in the Supreme Court while filing status reports on investigation into alleged disproportionate assets of two UP political heavyweights – Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati. 
    
The CBI’s status reports waxed and waned depending on seasonal political expediencies directly linked to the UPA government’s need for the support of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in Lok Sabha. 
    
But the coal scam investigation status report, submitted in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court on March 8, was quite different.

The Horror of Indian Jails: Dark Sub-Culture Dominated By Murky Underworld Of Organized Gangs And Criminals Supported By Poor Legal Aid And Careless Machinery

Right to Justice bill: Helplessness, psychological disorders torture Indian prisoners. An extensive investigation by INNLIVE reporters across the country has exposed a dark sub-culture thriving in jails across the country, not very different from the murky underworld of organised gangs and criminals. In the absence of proper legal aid, the poor and the vulnerable, especially women and youngsters, unwittingly become part of the sordid system.

Any discussion on prisoners in a sympathetic manner evokes a sharp response: "Why should you worry about these people? They are dangerous criminals, murderers and rapists, why complain if they are ill treated ? They deserve it." 

Can The Indian State Do Better Than Indian Society

At every point that the Indian State interacts with the Indian girl child or the Indian woman, it fairs no better than the age old attitudes she faces at home or in her community.

Historians and sociologists have extensively chronicled the backdrop against which rape occurs and how societies have dealt with the victims and the accused. That is, both the political economy of rape, and the nature of the laws, supposedly, created for redress. Extensive literature covers the circumstances and motivations behind this gross violation of a human being’s right – be it as a systemised and deliberate strategy of civil war and military aggression (Bosnia, Rwanda, Partition,); random acts of violence or rape as a part of theft and crime, including domestic violence. 

Motivations have been and remain both complex and intertwined. In Rwanda, for example, research shows not only did the Hutu Militia rape Tutsi women, but often raped their own “Hutu women” as well. While causes of rape are different, there are some common threads – that point essentially to the central idea that society views women as ‘property’ and “objects” to be acquired, traded and raped. Unfortunately, and perhaps more dangerously, laws made to assure that justice is done also betray the same theme – i.e. a woman is not seen as an equal – but rather a commodity or property, even by the justice system, when she is most grossly violated.

This is nowhere clearer than in a cross cultural and historical analysis of rape laws in different countries. Here plenty of documented evidence supports the idea that redress was possible but attempted only when violating women was seen as a “man’s property” being violated. In Babylonia, for example, if a virgin was raped she was considered blameless and her attacker was slain. But if a married woman was raped, both she and her attacker were thrown into the river to drown. In medieval Israel, “If an unmarried woman was raped within the city walls, she was stoned to death with her attacker. (Logic: if she hadn’t consented she would have screamed and been heard). If it happened outside the city walls, the victim was considered guiltless; Yet the women involved continued to face certain consequences: 1. If not betrothed, the rapist was ordered to pay her father 50 silver pieces in compensation for what would have been her bride price, and the pair was commanded to wed 2. If she was betrothed, it became null and void and her price was marked down (damaged goods/sale price).” 

More recently, those analysing rape laws in Victorian England point in the same direction. One academic writes, , “Rape entered the law books through the back door, as a property crime of man against man, with the women viewed as the property involved. Women were wholly owned subsidiaries of men in ancient times – first owned by their fathers, and then by their husbands. Rape was, therefore, the theft of virginity, and embezzlement of a man’s fair price for his daughter”.1 Another scholar covering laws in Victorian England states, “By extending legal protection to only virgins, early statutory rape laws served as a tool to protect common morality rather than penalise men for violating the law”. Historically thus Rape laws remained focussed on protecting some “collective” chastity/morality (i.e. virgins, in particular)’ of a society – but never an individual woman’s safety and dignity.

The aftermath of the Damini rape case (where a young girl was brutally gang raped and murdered in Delhi) forces us to answer questions about the biases in our rape laws and how they entirely reflect India’s inability to come to accept her women as an equal. Indeed, one must not forget that it took a custodial rape (rape in a police station) to bring out an amendment regarding the admissibility and indisputability of the victim’s claim that she did not consent! In the Mathura rape case, where the rape occurred in the premises of a police station, the initial judgment turned out to be in favour of the accused. It was only on appeal that the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court set aside the judgment of the Sessions Court, and sentenced the accused to one and five years of rigorous imprisonment respectively. The Court held that “passive submission due to fear induced by serious threats” could not be construed as consent or willing sexual intercourse. Yet, when the appeal was made to the Supreme Court, the Senior Counsel while defending the accused Policemen divided the concept of consent into two i.e. express and implied consent. 

The Supreme Court acquitted both the accused and held that the Mathura rape case had “raised no alarm”. Sadly, it was not until the Criminal Law Amendment Act, 1983 that the law stated that if the woman/ girl says that she did not consent to the sexual intercourse, the Court shall presume that she did not consent! Still human rights activists and women’s groups will endorse that the medieval concept (remnants of ancient laws) of “implied consent”, “need for corroboration” “character of victim”, “hue and cry”, continue to make a mockery of the criminal justice system in case after case. Why is it that our laws need to find out “if she was a good women”, “did she consent (not realising, that women can only consent to sex, not rape)” and perhaps ironically, the State tends to ask if she has the courage to taken on a skewed justice system that is already heavily biased against her.

While ‘official laws’ reflect bias – ‘unofficial /alternative’ systems of justice are simply a cauldron in which the rape victims must jump soon after. It is widely known that the Khaps in Haryana responded to series of rapes by suggesting early marriage, and endorsing honour killings, rather than protecting a girl child, reporting the crime and bringing the perpetrators to justice. It is now unfortunate that we in India cannot distinguish state apathy from state complicity. Indeed, at every point that the Indian State interacts with the Indian girl child or the Indian woman, it fairs no better than the age old attitudes she faces at home or in her community.

A women’s status in a society is directly related to access to education, her right to vote, and her ability to be a productive member of her family and society. Unfortunately in India, even when she beats the odds and acquires those things, her value seems to go up, not intrinsically, but as property, valued, devalued in dowry and other social ills. Indeed, Indian society is far away from de-commoditising and de–humanising women, and it is a known fact that cultural reforms are a painfully slow process that takes generations, unprecedented political will and game changing laws. 

Rape victims, of course cannot wait for this long. Neither can we rely on individual humanness of men, who will continue to use this as a weapon of crime, violence, subjugation and pleasure. What we can do is pin the accountability on the State to force changes in laws, police and the justice system that make the subversion of the system in the aftermath of a rape impossible and create deterrence systems that make the potential perpetrators fear for their freedom and future. It is the only way the Indian State can show the women of India that while the Indian society has been long biased against her – the Indian State can do better.

Split Personality - A myth or Reality?

In this world today, there are a lot of unbelievable diseases. One of them is the disease of human's mind, and a split personality is counted as one of the disease. Not many of people around the world believe if this disease really exists or not, or they rather think that the person is acting.

I was on my way from Bangalore to Mumbai and on the way, as I was interacting with one person and suddenly we got this topic, “Split Personalities” and started discussing about it.

When I was in collage, I had one very good friend, by name Mr. T. Kiran Kumar. The uniqueness of our relation was our compatibility and depth of understanding. If we are with kids, or classmates or elderly people or uneducated people or females or highly intellectuals, how we will behave, was purely on the type of circle or group we were into. Believe me, our attitude, approach, behavior, and the way to react to a situation was based on the type of group we were into. Does that mean that we were having split personalities? If that is the case then all of us are having split personalities. We behave differently with our family members, with our friends, our spouse, and unknown people, right? Lets see.

Let us understand the term “Split Personality”.

Definition of Split Personality: “A relatively rare dissociative disorder in which the usual integrity of the personality breaks down and two or more independent personalities emerge”.

Explanation: There is no category or phenomenon in psychiatry called split personality. The term is commonly used in popular language to indicate a contradictory or drastically and dramatically alternating type of behavior of the"Jekyll and Hyde" type. It is often confused with the medical illness of schizophrenia because the etymology of the latter (from the Greek schizein, to split + phren, mind) suggests, misleadingly, that schizophrenia is a type of split personality. In schizophrenia, however, the splitting is within one single personality as the individual's thoughts, feelings and emotions are seriously and confusingly disconnected from each other in a chaotic and random fashion. Schizophrenic individuals, far from having split or multiple personalities, actually have a great struggle maintaining the coherence and integrity of even a single self.

Before proceeding further lets try and understand as what do be mean by term “Personality”.

HUMAN PERSONALITY
THERE are three distinct meanings for the term "personality," two of them general and popular and the third technical and philosophical. The first and most general meaning is that personality is the sum of the characteristics, which make up physical and mental being. These include appearance, manners, habits, tastes and moral character. The second meaning emphasizes the characteristics that distinguish one person from another. The two meanings overlap or merge into each other, as the first considers all characteristics pertaining to the individual, without comparing him with others, while the second sees the same facts in relation to the outside world and fixes attention mainly upon the features that distinguish the subject from his fellows. This second meaning is equivalent to individuality. It represents a widely prevalent conception of the term.

But the third meaning is the most important, and is the only conception of any value to the psychic researcher and the philosopher or psychologist. This conception of personality is concerned only with mental characteristics; it makes no distinction between common and specific marks. In fact it connotes mental processes rather than fixed qualities. The capacity for having mental states, or the fact of having them, constitutes personality for the psychologist and the philosopher. Personality is thus the stream of consciousness, regardless of the question whether any special state is constant or casual, essential or unessential. Physical marks will have no place in this conception, unless they may serve as symbols of mental states. It abstracts from them and denotes only the stream of mental phenomena.

This third meaning is so radically different from the other two that it gives rise to perpetual misunderstandings between the philosopher and the public. These misunderstandings arise particularly in the discussion of survival after death. The layman with his conception of personality looks for physical phenomena of some kind to illustrate or prove it. Consequently, if interested in psychic phenomena at all, he prefers materialization, which best satisfies his conception of personality. He cannot take the point of view of the psychologist or the philosopher, who neglects these purely sensory characteristics, and fixes his attention on mental states as the proper conception of the personality, which may survive. Materialization would supply the very characteristics, which the layman fixes upon to represent personality. But precisely the fact that mental states are not presented to sense, leads the philosopher to conceive of immortality as possible.

If the layman's conception were correct the philosopher and psychologist would deny the possibility of survival with entire confidence, as a necessary implication of bodily dissolution. The day could be saved only by the doctrine of a "spiritual body," an It astral body," or an "ethereal organism," supposedly a replica of the physical organism in its spatial and other characteristics. These represent personality after the manner or analogy of the physical body. The real spirit may indeed have a transcendental bodily form; but the stream of consciousness remains the same whether there is any "spiritual body" or "ethereal organism" or not. This is the fundamental element in all conceptions of spiritual reality. It is not necessary to decide the question of a "spiritual body" or "ethereal organism" as the condition of believing in the existence of spirits. That is another and perhaps a secondary problem. What we need to know is, whether the stream of consciousness survives, whether the personal memory continues, not how it continues. The fact of survival is to be considered first and the condition of it afterwards.

Historical Review of “Split Personality”
Possible cases of split personality have been reported in the medical literature since the early 19th century, and the condition was formally defined in the first years of the 20th. But until recently it was considered extremely rare--fewer than 200 cases were described before 1980. The diagnosis became much more common in the 80s for several reasons. One was the phenomenal popularity of Flora Schreiber's 1973 book Sybil, which told of a woman with 16 personalities. Stories of "multiples," fictionalized or otherwise, were nothing new--The Three Faces of Eve dates from 1954, "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" from way back in 1886--but Sybil made a crucial innovation, introducing the idea that multiple personalities stemmed from trauma during early childhood. Around the same time, child protection advocates and feminists began arguing that child abuse, especially sexual abuse, occurred far more often than previously supposed. And in the late 70s, in a phenomenon thought to be linked to the resurgence of Christian fundamentalism, reports of so-called satanic ritual abuse first captured the public's imagination.

Presented with, on one hand, allegations of an unrecognized epidemic of crimes against innocents and, on the other, a simple mechanism to explain why their troubled patients couldn't remember any abuse (i.e., the personality divides in order to shield itself from horrific memories), a small but devoted group of therapists began diagnosing multiple personality disorder with alarming frequency--more than 20,000 cases had been reported by 1990. Under the influence of hypnosis and other techniques, subjects reported dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of "alters" whose behavior, age, sex, language, and occasionally species differed from that of their everyday personas. Alters were coaxed into revealing bloodcurdling stories of abuse by family members, or of sacrificing their own babies to shadowy cults. One prominent multiple personality specialist claimed that the satanic network programmed alters into its victims, which it could then trigger to act in certain ways by sending them color-coded flowers.

By the early 1990s it began to dawn on rational folk just how preposterous the whole business was. Having investigated more than 12,000 accusations over four years, researchers at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Illinois at Chicago determined that not a single case of satanic ritual abuse had been substantiated. A 1992 FBI study arrived at the same conclusion: overeager therapists had planted horror stories in the minds of their patients. In 1998 psychologist Robert Rieber made a convincing case, based on an analysis of audiotapes, that even the famous Sybil had confabulated her multiple personalities at the insistence of her therapist. The bubble burst, and diagnoses of multiple personalities subsided.

Some real Life Examples of Split Personalities

Case-1
The first patient is a man named William S. Milligan, he was caught by the charge of rape in Ohio at 1977. As police and the psychologists examined him, they found the unbelievable fact that he had several personalities. Here are the first ten personalities they found. In The Minds Of Billy Milligan;

1. The first personality is the main personality, Billy, twenty-seven years old, blue eyes, brown hair.

2. The second personality is Arthur, twenty-two years old, British. This personality and the next one are the keeper of the "Spot", where they can have the control of the body, or become themselves open to the outer world through the body of Billy.

3. The third personality is Leigen, twenty-three years old, Yugoslav, who knows how to fight and can use gun and other dangerous stuff, controls the hate.

4. Fourth personality is Allen, eighteen years old, talkative, only one who smoke and right handed.

5. Fifth personality is Tommy, sixteen years old, knows how to unlock chains or handcuffs, and the specialist of the electricity.

6. Sixth personality is Danny, fourteen years old, always scared to something especially man, blond hair, blue eyes.

7. Seventh personality is David, eight years old, controls pain, red-brown hair blue eyes.

8. Eighth personality is Christine, three years old, cannot talk, blond hair, female.

9. Ninth personality is Christopher, thirteen years old, brother of Christine.

10. For the last tenth personality, Adarana, nineteen years old, quiet, lesbian, female.

Those were the main ten personalities of the William S. Milligan. As if you wonder how they know their outlooks, William Milligan, Billy has a hobby of painting, or some of the personalities do. Therefore, they draw each other on the painting and that is how they get to know their outlooks.

Case-2
The woman's name is Claudia Ellen Yascow. She was arrested by the charge of killing four people, which they found later that she was not the suspect. However, it was not unnecessary for the police to think that she was the suspect, because she had information of the scene that cannot be known unless the person has been there. Even though the information was confusing and messy because of her mental disease, police believed her and thought that she was the suspect, for she knew even where the pot and other little detail was at when the crime occurred. She was caught once but let go after few month with the check of psychologist that she has a incubation type of split minds, and the lie detector found her answer to the question that she was not at the scene when the crime happened showed what she said is true, "No, I did not."

Her trouble is brought up mainly because of her mental disease, incubation type of split mind. Claudia is different, as she can always be herself even she is in a great pressure, but she will be losing a collect criterion to judge what kind of situation she is in. For example, when she was caught in jail, she truly thought that she was in a middle of movie taking and she was playing her rolls of main heroine. "Suddenly she put the smile on her face and said 'I never thought that I could have a great chance like this,' She leaned her head on the wall. 'I've always thought of having a chance to do a big act like a big actress. I do have some experience of acting in few films as a supporting player, but if I play this murderess act, maybe I can be very famous.' Dye stared at her and asked, 'You think we are making a film right now?' She slapped his hand softly, smiling, 'Oh Dye, you have seen all those cameras at the corridor and those of TV's. I hope I can have a deal with a lot of money coming in, you know it is kind of hard to act.'

As you can see above, by the shock she got from been captured by police, her mind had made an escape way from pain by believing that all the stuff going is an act and not a real deal. This is very close to what Billy has done to himself; only the difference is that fortunately, Claudia was not getting shocked when she was before teenager, but after she became an adult. I think that this is the reason why she was quite right in condition even though she had some mental problems since she was fourteen and had been looked after by a psychologist. Her case is still, with a great trouble, that in such a hard circumstance like in the police office, she would be nervous and will not be able to say what she really want to.

As she says in Unveiling Claudia, "If I am lying to you right now, that is anything but my will."(72) She is telling the truth here that her mind is trying to protect herself by not telling the truth about the matter, and she cannot help it. It is rather an act of her instinct, to let the shock coming above her because of telling and remembering the truth softer in order to not breakdown for it.

This has been appearing in the way of making the book. As she was making the confession about the murder, she always kept telling a one big story with half lie and half-truth. As you will find later that the truth was such a hard one that it was too much for her to remember it and telling it to the person who you met one or two years ago. This can be seen in Unveiling Claudia, " 'Claudia, I don't know what I should believe in you.' She put her hand on my shoulder and looked into my eye. 'I'm sorry Dan. I do trust you more than before. But not enough.'" This conversation was held more than two years past after they have met, and as you can see that she is very careful about telling the truth and that is why she kept telling lie, or something that she believed it was a truth and unfortunately it was not. Although she is always careful about telling the truth, she is always an easy person to make believe. If someone tells her that she has a superstitious power, she believes it and so on. This has prevented her from stopping the murder, because she had known that the real suspects of the case had planned to proceed the crime week before the murder. However, she was busy and also her weak mind was scared with the pressure what if she tell it to the victim and the what if the suspects would know about it and come after her? In the way of her mind escaping from the reality, she started to believe that it was an oracle, and she could not stop the crime. This story was one of the reason she was arrested once by the story told by her friend that she knew that the crime is going the happen a week before, and the truth was different.

The shocking truth was told on the end, and it was shocking enough for her mind to look for some escape way. On the night when crime has occurred, she was forced to go to the place with a gay, right after the murder had happened. The man was gay but he had a gun in his hand and she could not refuse to go there with him. Their car came in front of the house just in time when two suspects where killing the victim, and after they had gone away, they went to the house's garage where there was a one dead body of a man and one body of woman laying on the floor. Claudia was forced to put her hand into the dead woman's genitals and find a bag of drugs. Now, this is a real hard and sick experience for the twenty-six years old woman, or any other person in the world. She was shocked and her mind could not stand it and she has lost her memories in order to prevent the breakdown.

After few days she find herself knowing about that crime and could not find out why she know about it so much, she told the story to the police and they misjudged her as a criminal and put her in jail.

What They have to say
My father is a metal health counselor here in the US. He has seen only 2 multiple personality disorders in his 20+ years of private practice. In both cases patients were former participants in covens. One was a willing participant and the other was supposedly the unwilling offspring of a "breeder" program.

Neither my father or I are generally prone to believe such things for the very reasons that you put forth in your article but never-the-less both patients exhibited classic multiple personality disorder symptomology. In the case of the unwilling participant he came to the conclusion that the majority of the damage to her psyche had been done by a previous therapist, when he met with the therapist and watched him work with her he was then certain that this was the case... Perhaps this fits with your theory of therapists putting ideas into peoples heads.

Unfortunately, this leaves a difficult problem to solve... Whether or not the problem is caused by a therapist or by some other external force, what is to be done with these people? Regardless of *how* they got that way they still deserve to be whole persons which will probably require further therapy... The *cause* of multiple personality disorder is not so important to determine for these patients as healing is.

The process used by my father in his therapy sessions is called re-integration where the personalities are not taught how to *co-exist* but rather how to re-integrate with the main persona or the core identified "true self" as discovered in therapy. This re-integration can be very simple or complicated depending on the strength of a particular personality.

For instance, if a person has one major alternate and several minor ones the minor ones would be integrated first before the major etc. The difficulty arises because for each personality present there is a tremendous loss of individuality for each one and in each case this loss of an individual "persona" is often felt as a grief or loss of a friend for the true self. As each personality is re-integrated the true self becomes more in tune with its own emotions and feels this grief more keenly. For this reason it is important to take things slowly and to address only personalities that emerge rather than force anything.

In many cases a persons sense of self may be so buried under all of these layers of 'others' that finding the true self may be the most difficult part of the therapeutic process. Often this self is so weak and lacking in will that it presents as a smaller, other personality. It takes caring, sensitivity and insight to help these people since this true self is often a very young child.

It might sound strange and eerie and it is... The problem with your argument of is it all in their head is that of course it is... Does that make it any less real for the people who suffer from it? It is very similar to people who experience vivid hallucinations, are those things real? No. Do they cause them grief and pain? Yes.

The question then becomes not about testing the *reality* of the multiple personality claim but instead helping the person experiencing it with care. Coming from the therapeutic standpoint that, if it is real for them, it is real.

Crime: Has Chennai Become Murder Capital Of India?

By SRIVANI SHETTY | INNLIVE

A rash of murders has Chennai residents on the edge. 

Divided they fought the May 16 assembly election and united they suffered a humiliating defeat. Now the entire opposition parties in Tamil Nadu agree on one issue. There is a total breakdown in the law and order scene in Tamil Nadu. Murders and mayhem has become the order of the day. All reached a flashpoint last Friday when Chennai woke up to a bloody morning with the news of a gruesome murder of 24-year-old Swathi, a software engineer, who was waiting for a suburban train at the crowded Nungambakkam Railway Station. Six days after the murder which shocked the entire nation, the Tamil Nadu police is groping in the dark for any clues.

Where Are Our Missing Children?

In India, a child goes missing every eight minutes, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Almost 40 percent of those children haven’t been found.

If you are a parent, go hug your child before you read this piece. We have an epidemic on, an epidemic that gets but a passing mention in the newspapers, an epidemic that is real and tangible only for those parents who wait for the call that never comes, the child who never returns, who do the rounds of the police stations, photographs in hand, who put out advertisements in the newspapers, describing what their child was wearing when he or she went missing, who live a life in limbo. Our children are going missing. One child every eight minutes across India. 

“In India, a child goes missing every eight minutes, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Almost 40 percent of those children haven’t been found.” Wall Street Journal India Realtime.

On October 25, 2012, firstpost.com stated, 

“According to the police, a newborn boy was kidnapped from Wadia Hospital in Central Mumbai. The day-old boy was stolen during visiting hours when his mother, Jasmine Naik (28), was taking an evening walk in the corridor of the hospital, they said. She had left the baby unattended in the ward and was taking a stroll when someone took him away, police said, adding the hospital, run by a private trust, didn’t have CCTV cameras.” 

DNA pointed out in its October 26, 2012 issue, 

“The Bombay High Court in 2009 issued 23 guidelines for enhancing security in government, semi-government and BMC-run hospitals after a four day old baby of Mohan and Mohini Nerurkar was kidnapped from the maternity ward of BMC-run Sion hospital. The HC order said that sensitive areas such as the neo-natal, post-natal and paediatric wards should have CCTV cameras. The court said they should also be installed at all entry and exit routes. However, not one camera has been installed inside the premises of Wadia Maternity Hospital. The management has left a proposal to install CCTV cameras worth Rs 1 lakh pending for three years.” 

In its July 8, 2012 issue, DNA pointed out, 

“Three year old Sangita, who was kidnapped from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) on June 10, was rescued from her kidnapper at the Haridwar bus station by the Haridwar Police on Saturday afternoon. The alleged kidnapper, identified as Raju, was also arrested by the Haridwar police. The Government Railway Police (GRP) of Maharashtra recently released shocking CCTV footage of the kidnapping. It shows a limping man alighting from a train and wandering about the station before spotting the sleeping family and three year old Sangita, who was not asleep at the time. The man then sat beside her and took her away.” 

Sangita’s parents were lucky that she was found. Not all kidnappings have a happy ending; some children are never found, or are found dead. 

Perhaps the most chilling are the 2006 Nithari killings, where remains of 17 children were found in drains outside a bungalow. 

“For the last two years, more than forty young children and women went missing from a small urban hamlet of Nithari, at the centre of Noida, a satellite town bordering Delhi (India). The local media regularly covered the incidents of missing children; the National Commission for Women also took cognisance of the matter, but the children continued to vanish in thin air. However, in the last week of December 2006, by sheer chance some human remains were spotted at the backyard of a palatial house situated at the edge of the village of Nithari. When the spot was searched further what emerged was a chilling tale of cold blooded serial murders that perhaps qualify as the biggest serial killings any where in the world.” http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Child/2007/nithari.html 

The unimaginable horror of Nithari killings, were further abetted by a lackadaisical police force that refused to take complaints of missing children. 

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), almost 60,000 children were reported missing in 2011. Of these, 22,000 are yet to be located. However, according to a report by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), nearly 11 children go missing every hour, and at least, 4 of them are never found. According to BBA, the number of missing children could be as high as 90,000 per year. West Bengal topped the charts of missing children with 12,000 children missing in 2011. Madhya Pradesh followed with 7,797 cases, while Delhi had 5,111 cases. These are merely reported cases that discount those children who might run away due to various factors, ranging from abuse to dysfunctional homes, and exam stress, or some who might get lost while families travel. Majority of the missing children are just taken away. The statistics are scary – in 2011, 15,284 cases of kidnapping were reported. This was up 43 percent from the previous year. 

Children are kidnapped for human trafficking, illegal organ transplantation, prostitution, child porn racketing, child labour in factories and unpaid domestic help. Many children are forced to beg; some are mutilated to evoke sympathy for more earning potential, and a small percentage for ransom. 

Kidnappings for ransom are on the rise, and in some cases even after paying up, the parents never see their children again. According to a report in the Guardian, 

“Figures from Delhi police show that kidnap for ransom is on the rise. In 2008, there were 1,233 cases in the national capital; by last year that had soared to 2,975. In the first three months of 2011, 802 cases were registered.” 

According to an estimate by NGOs, only 50 percent of missing children are actually reported to the NCRB. Urban slum children are the most vulnerable as they are easily lured into promise of good food and clothes. According to news reports, there are over 800 gangs with 5,000 members involved in the kidnapping and trafficking of children, much in the same way they would traffic drugs, or contraband. Some parents are so poor; they don’t have recent photographs to give the police. Children between the ages of 6 and 13 are the most targeted and vulnerable. Infants are also taken; sometimes from the very hospitals they are born in, or from railway stations, and other crowded places. The children, who are lucky enough to be found and rescued or have the presence of mind to run away, speak of being sold into agricultural or factory labour. 

Why do we have so many missing children and why are they not found? 

It starts with how the investigation is done. Very often, First Information Reports are not registered; just an entry is made into a list of missing persons at the police station, and a photograph of missing child sent across city police stations. Cases are only investigated if the person reporting the missing child files a case of kidnapping. 

Delhi scores better in this regard – if a child is not found within 24 hours, a case of kidnapping is to be filed mandatorily. An initiative called Pehchaan (recognition) in Delhi has policemen taking pictures of children in slums for record, and copies are provided to their families. The Crime Branch has launched an exclusive portal (www.trackthemissingchild.gov.in) to track down missing children across the country. All states have to compulsorily put this facility into place. A PIL filed by Bachpan Bachao Andolan, states that over 1.7 lakh children have gone missing in the country between January 2008 and 2010. In response to this PIL, Supreme Court has instructed the chief secretaries of all states and union territories to ask police stations to register an FIR, and start an investigation. Supreme Court also directed that all police stations should have a special juvenile police officer. 

This may be too little, too late for those parents who have waited endlessly. For those children, who have already become statistics in the long lists, these measures might not be of any help. But we can, and we must push for more attention to the growing menace; we cannot let this get brushed under the carpet.

Nobody’s Missing Children

NGO’s working in the field estimate that barely 10 percent of all missing children cases are registered with the police. An overwhelming 90 percent disappear into the great morass of the Never Seen Never Heard of Again.

“Nobody seems to be concerned about the missing children. This is the irony,” stated a bench of the Supreme Court on Feb 5. The remark is indicative of the apathy shown by the Centre and state governments toward the issue of missing children. The court had directed the Centre and the various states to file status reports on the status of the missing children in the country and in their states in March 2012. The notices were issued by Justices Altamas Kabir and SS Nijjar in response to a Public Interest Litigation by the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan on the escalating numbers of missing children in India. Unfortunately, a year later, these status reports are still to be filed by the Centre and several state governments.

The Supreme Court, taking serious note of the absence of the chief secretaries of Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu despite being directed to be physically present and not through their counsels, threatened to issue non bailable arrest warrants against them. The West Bengal counsel incidentally submitted that the status report had not been filed since there was no instruction, which the SC took exception to. Of the five States whose chief secretaries had been specifically asked to be present, only the chief secretaries of Goa and Orissa were present. Not only the Centre but also the governments of Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Uttrakhand, West Bengal and Union Territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, NCT of Delhi and Lakhshadweep have not filed their status reports, the court noted.

The numbers are scary. According to the figures filed by BBA in its PIL, over 1.7 lakh children had gone missing between January 2008 and January 2010. The exact figures given were 1,17,480 children who had gone missing, of which 41,546 children were still untraced. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, one child goes missing in India every eight minutes. Forty per cent of these children will never be found and will end up as mere statistics in an ever growing list of missing children in this country, children who are picked up from streets, from outside their homes, from railway stations, even from hospitals as newborns. Many of these children will end up trafficked, either as cheap labour, or to beggar syndicates or into the sex trade. For their parents it is a nightmare they live through every single day, the waiting for news that their child has been found, the hoping against hope, catching a sudden glimpse of someone in a crowded place who resembles their child, receiving information from distant places, that perhaps their child has been spotted there, only to rush there and be disappointed.

In 2011, 15,284 children were kidnapped, up 43 percent from the previous year. Around 3,517 cases of child trafficking were reported in the same year, buying and selling girls for the sex trade, for marriage, as well as trafficking of children for the organ trade, as drug mules, into bonded labour in the unorganised sector and to begging syndicates across the country. According to unconfirmed reports, there are close on 800 organised child trafficking gangs across the country. Traffickers target children from the lower income groups, where the families do not have the financial strength or the political connections to pursue their cases with the authorities. They pick up children who aren’t watched over too carefully from slums and congested areas. Merely a handful of the children who get kidnapped are taken for ransom. Sometimes, if the parents pay up, or the police locates the kidnapped child, the child is reunited with its family. Sometimes, despite paying up, some kidnapped children are brutalised and killed.

The highest number of untraced children are from Delhi, followed by Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore, city wise. According to the BBA, the number of missing children is highest in Maharashtra followed by West Bengal, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh and the number of untraced missing children is highest in West Bengal followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Sadly, 75 per cent of missing children in Kolkata and 65 per cent in Delhi “continue to remain untraced” according to a two-year study, titled ‘Trafficking of Women and Children in India’, compiled by Shankar Sen and P M Nair, with a team of ISS researchers. The report also found that sometimes, these children are actually sold to traffickers by their own family or people who know them, at times for as little as Rs 5,000. The survey interviewed over 500 rescued children who were now in homes. Of these, 40 percent told the surveyors that they had been sold when they were younger than ten, the rest were sold when they were between 11 and 14 years of age. Of these, only a mere seven percent of the rescued children stated they had been trafficked by total strangers.

India has the largest number of child labourers in the world, even though child labour is prohibited by the law. Data suggests that 12.66 million children are employed illegally in cigarette, bidi, firework and carpet weaving factories. Children are also employed at construction sites and in homes as domestic workers. Many of these are victims of child trafficking.

NGO’s working in the field estimate that barely 10 percent of all missing children cases are registered with the police. An overwhelming 90 percent disappear into the great morass of the Never Seen Never Heard of Again. The way missing children are investigated by our authorities is another reason why recovery rates are so low. Except for a few states, FIRs are not registered for missing children. The name of the missing child is just entered into a list of missing persons at the police station where it is reported. This does not lead to an in depth investigation. Photos of the missing child are sent to all police stations in cities like Mumbai but no active investigation into the disappearance of the child is done, unless the person who reports the child missing asks the police to file a case of kidnapping. Post the horrific Nithari murders in 2006, the law in Delhi requires a case of kidnapping to be filed by the police if a child is not located within 24 hours of being reported missing. In the Nithari killings, children had begun going missing from the neighbourhood for two years, but the police refused to register complaints or investigate the cases.

As a start, the police have begun sharing an integrated database of missing children, www.zipnet.in, as well as unidentified children found. Some of the parents of the children on the database are so poor, they don’t even have a recent photograph of the child they can provide. There is an interesting recent initiative by the Delhi police where it goes into the slums, photographs and registers all the children so that in the event of the child going missing recent photographs and details of the child are available. What is of immediate need though is an integrated country wide database that allows states to track missing children who are trafficked across states and work in tandem to rescue trafficked children, as well as trace children who might have run away for reasons ranging from dysfunctional homes, to exam pressure to a desire to see a big city. A standard protocol procedure to deal with a case of missing children needs to be put into place across the country by investigation and law enforcement agencies.

The Supreme Court’s annoyance on this issue is well justified. The “last opportunity” given to the Centre and the states to file their affidavits is now February 19. Whether the status reports will be filed by February 19 or not remains to be seen, but the fact remains that we, as a country, are not concerned about our missing children. They disappear into files, remain photographs on posters and morph into mere statistics. The parents live through the nightmare every single day of not knowing whether their child is alive or dead, or if alive, living under what unimaginable conditions. And we need to hang our heads in shame at our collective apathy to this terrifying issue.

Interview with Asim Sarode: Savior of Innocent Social victims

By M H Ahssan

Asim Sarode, an activist lawyer and the founder of Sahyog Trust in Pune, is a savior for many social victims. He brought light into the dark minds of prisoners at Yerwada Prison (Where Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned during Indian Independence Struggle) through a programme designed under Gandhian principles. Apart from that, he rescued many innocent prisoners who had been inside the prison for framed up cases. Asim Sarode expresses his ideas behind the noble actions in an exclusive interview with HNN.

You came up with Gandhian ideologies and principles at a time, when it was declining in the society. What were the major hurdles that you faced in the beginning of your social service?
It is true that I started my activities based on Gandhian ideologies. However, I never mentioned his name in the beginning. My prime idea was Adalat Mukti, that is a society without courts. The activity of the judiciary must go within the society also. Then only the real social problems will come out from the social base. It is an ongoing and struggling process. I started to mention activities as based on Gandhian ideologies at a later stage only.

What were the major hurdles that you face in the social service now?
Nowadays people live very collectively and calculative. In this management society the focus is on material things. The process to reform the confirmed activities of the Indian judiciary system was a major hurdle during the recent days.

As a lawyer you can fight against the evil sides with the society with legal points. As a commoner what role can one play in developing the situation of deprived section in the society?
I appreciate the factor of common man advocating judiciary. In that case one can talk about their own dilemmas. It is same like one person tries to cure his disease through the practice of Yoga without the help of a doctor. Mahatma Gandhi's principles included this idea. However there many hurdles for a common man to advocate judiciary in the present day situation. Many of the lawyers believe that a common man is out of community and they must not be included in the judiciary system.

Do you think that a reworking has to be done from the official level to ensure the well being of the society?
I strongly believe that there must be revaluation of the Indian judiciary structue. However people from the official level and lawyers are making it difficult. We must struggle on that and make them understand the situation.

'Haath Se Haath Milaa' with Urmila Matondkar was a milestone for securing legal aids for HIV patients. What are the major changes that the event brought on the HIV patient' way?
'Haath Se Haath Milaa' with Urmila Matondkar took the message of the campaign to the grassroots of the society. 'Doordarshan' and all the major newspapers featured the event. We conveyed the idea that there must not be any discrimination or demarcation of the AIDS patients in the society. Nobody has the right to deny education for the children with AIDS or children of HIV parents.

Do you think women's issues have considerably reduced in the society due to your activities?
Women's issues are out of our limits at most times. There are many unreported domestic violence cases. The law against domestic violence is still not implemented in Maharashtra. Only in New Delhi it is implemented to some extent. However law is not the ultimate answer for women's issues. I am trying to work forward for them.

What are your achievements in developing the ambience at mental asylums?
I would like to work so much for mental asylums. I support NGOs, which are opposing treatments of 1960s. Those treatments are in opposition to the human rights of those mental patients. We are talking about psychosocial rehabilitation here. In that case the patients should not sleep to cure the disease. The regular dose of sleeping medicines will harm the patients' health.

What are your services to abolish child labour?
I am spreading awareness about child labour through many organizations in Maharashtra. We are trying to give direct protection to the children. There is no effect if they are put into the juvenile homes at younger stage for an unknown crime. Through the Juvenile Justice Act 2000, we are trying to ensure a safe future and safety to the deprived children.

What is your views regarding GLBT (Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender) movement?
I respect their feelings and feel that we must give space for their feelings. Indian Judiciary system has claimed these types of sexual discriminations as illegal. However it is a criminalisation of human feelings. I feel that their human feelings must be protected. Moreover this aspect is not a new phenomenon. Even in the oldest and famous Khajuraho engravings these aspects have been portrayed.

How did the Sahyog Trust begin?
My father started it 13 years before. It was started with a motto " Life for all." He started Sahyog Trust working on education. He started two schools for Adivasis that run still in Maharashtra. I implemented social legal activism to the trust. Now, Sahyog trust offers effective social justice for those who deserve it.

Rehabilitation of prisoners in jails must be a challenging action to undertake. How did you get initiated into this area of human development?
Rehabilitation of prisoners in Indian jails is a wide process. I am just giving legal support to the poor prisoners. If any prisoner cannot afford to pay a lawyer, I appear for them. At the same tome I try to morally support and motivate the people. I encourage other colleagues to join my endeavor. Many prisoners can become an asset to our society at a later stage. They will start to think, lament and may even want to do compensatory deeds for their past actions. We should not discriminate them in that situation. I am trying to get those prisoners as well as wrongly convicted innocent prisoners out of jail.

Has Kiran Bedi's work in Tihar Jails been a source of inspiration?
Frankly speaking "no." I hadn't read her books till two years after I started my activities. Later I met her personally. She is a wonderful person and true she inspired me.

Do you support capital punishment? Your reasons.
It is scary question. Well, I do not support capital punishment. Not only because it is against human rights but also because the punishment does not curtail the crime. If one is hanged at a moment, you can see that the same crime getting repeated in the same city within a short span of time. Even for culprits of Noida case I wont advocate capital punishment. They cannot wash away their crime within 15 minutes. They must lament in the four walls of prison and undertake rigorous work for years to bring a change to their criminal minds.

Do you plan to extend the services to other prisons in the country?
I haven't even spreaded my service to all prisons in Maharashtra. So many people have called from all across the Indian prisons to implement my actions. I do travel at some times across the country. However I wish to spread these ideas first in Maharashtra prisons.

Any unforgettable incident in your service?
I relieved one person who had been wrongly imprisoned for theft. He was a watcher of a godown and the accusation was all framed up. I never followed that guy thinking that the poor man may not afford to pay my fees. He went to his native and one day he sent me 250/-Rs. Money order. In a note he mentioned that he was able to pay me only that much and thanked me profusely for the service. It is an unforgettable moment in my service.

Similarly there was one guy who was accused as a terrorist by the Mumbai Police. He was arrested in accusation of attempted murder of Narendra Modi. His wife and children were dragged out of the house and all media were following them. I spoke with that guy and after so many struggles able to relieve him. It is also an unforgettable moment in my service.

Tell us about the happiest and most satisfactory moment in your career?
The happiest and satisfactory moments are those smiles on the people's faces after they get their justice.

Who prompted Gandhian ideology in you?
The social service of my family starts from my grand father's time. He was freedom fighter and stayed in Yamatal next to Gandhiji's Vardha Sevagram. He was quite under the influence of Gandhian ideologies. He joined the Padayatra with Mahatma Gandhi. He also got connected with Vinobha Bhave and donated 100 acres of land for the Bhoodan movement.

My father was into social activities during the emergency period of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. He fought against it. He is into different realms of social activities now.

Another person who influenced me into social service was Maharashtra Chief Justice Chandrasekhar Dharmadhikari. He is the son of the renowned Dada Dharmadhikari. His noble actions for the judiciary system influenced me.

Where have you done your law studies and schooling?
I have done my schooling at the native village Metikheda. Later I did B.A in political science from Amaravati University. I came to Pune to take graduation in journalism. However I could not get into journalism higher studies. At that time I read somewhere about "Combination Studies." It has mentioned law and journalism studies as a good combination for human right activities. Therefore I joined ILS Pune for L.L.B course.

Can you tell something about Asim Sarode that the world doesn't know?
People often tell that I am great person working on the social issues of helpless victims. However it is only a part of my habit. I can do only this. If someone ask me to do any other work it is impossible for me.

Have you faced any life threatening incidents?
Yes! The first instance was for the earlier mentioned case of helping the "so called terrorist." Some politicians and police officers took it against me and turned against me. The recent threat is continuing for the past 6 months. I relieved a convicted person called Arumogham Kaunder who was in prison for 11years for a crime he hadn't committed. This man was a laborer and could speak only his native language. Police imprisoned him for a framed up case of rape and murder. Now I am demanding 50 Lakhs Rupees as compensation for the poor man. The major culprit in this entire affair is Asst. Commissioner Nandakumar Chougle. He is a threatening person. He is a major threat to my life for past 6 months.

Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?
At many instances I feel that I should become a law minister. Then I can implement social justice in a more effective way. I will have a big team and I just want to bring judiciary changes for better justice.

If someone wants to join you in your endeavor what would be your primary requirement?
First of all the person must have an open mind. He must be able to see the things from a real angle. At the same time he should not be extremely religious. Not being religious mean that he should not discriminate those in need on the basis of religion.

What is your advice to law students and social workers?
Many students and social workers rely only on bookish thoughts and management calculations while entering the service. It should not be like that. The law students and social workers must have the open mind to understand the social problems. Their eyes should be wide open to see the happenings around them and they must apply their mind to it. Their common sense must be always alive.

The activist lawyer, who stands for the innocent victims in the society, is under constant threats even for his life. Great men like him deserve the support from all Indians while fighting for those innocent victims.

Ghost Of Fake Encounters Comes Back To Haunt Gujarat

By Rana Ayyub / Ahmedabad

A CBI progress report on the four fake encounters of 2004-2007 in Gujarat establishes what INN has been saying all along. Now, senior policemen and IB officials face arrests in these cases.

Everything seems to be going Narendra Modi’s way. Starting with the BJP national executive in Mumbai, which was a showcase of his clout, the Gujarat chief minister must be feeling his position is secure, now that Sanjay Joshi, his biggest detractor within the party, has also resigned from the BJP.

However, a CBI investigation into four police encounters between 2004-2007 in Gujarat might just throw the proverbial spanner in the works. The investigation, which is nearing completion, has made some startling recommendations. Documents in INN’s possession, including progress reports of the CBI and statements of witnesses and IB inputs, show that the agency has proposed the arrest of eight senior IPS officers in Gujarat.

A closer look at the documents and the CBI’s investigation into the cases validates INN’s stand on the fake encounters of Sadiq Jamal and Tulsi Prajapati. Soon after the high court orders to investigate the Sadiq Jamal encounter, INN had published (Dead Man Talking, 3 December 2011) IB inputs and documents that belied the Gujarat CID theory of the case. Discrepancies were found in the FIR filed by the Gujarat Crime Branch, which stated that 22-year-old Sadiq, a resident of Bhavnagar, was a Lashkar-e-Toiba militant and was on his way to assassinate Chief Minister Modi, BJP patriarch LK Advani and VHP leader Pravin Togadia. Interestingly, intelligence inputs given by Joint IB Director Rajinder Kumar to the state police contradicted the two previous IB inputs issued in the same case.

How Tribals Are Framed, Tortured And Raped By Police?

A humiliating tradition of branding a tribe as criminal, which was first introduced by the British, is still rampant in the hinterlands of south India.

On 28 November 2014, Thanjavore district collectorate in Tamil Nadu witnessed a strange incident. A frail woman, in her early 30s, named Murugayee, went to the collector’s office, the symbol of the government and constitution, with her three children to meet the collector to complain about the barbaric torture unleashed by the Tamil Nadu police. 

Commentary: 'The ‘Caged Parrot’ Has Changed Its Cage'

By Mukul Sinha (Guest Writer)

Is the CBI trying to give a clean chit to Amit Shah in the Ishrat encounter case? On 3 July last year, when the CBI filed the first chargesheet in the Ishrat Jahan case, it took the permission of the Ahmedabad (Rural) Judicial Magistrate to file a supplementary chargesheet later. Six months have passed, but the CBI is yet to file it. 

Instead, in the past four weeks or so, there have been several leaked stories in the major national dailies asserting that the CBI has given a clean chit to Amit Shah, who was the Gujarat MoS (Home) at the time of the killing, and BJP PM candidate Narendra Modi. 

The CBI has now leaked yet another story that Shah had claimed that the several calls he made in June 2004 to former IPS officer DG Vanzara, the main accused in the case, were official phone calls regarding a rath yatra. The investigation agency has apparently accepted Shah’s words as the truth.

Opinion: India Says Sanctions against Terrorists Ineffective; Pakistan Vows To Go For Their 'Jugular'

The killing fields of Peshawar inspired anew an international resolve at the Security Council to combat terrorism by adopting Friday a resolution urging nations to choke the flow of resources to the extremist organisations and to increase cooperation to fight them, even as India criticised the ineffectiveness of sanctions against them.

During the debate leading up to the resolution speaker after speaker invoked the massacre of the innocents this week in Peshawar and Pakistan vowed to go after the "jugular" of the terrorists.

Beware Of Your Mothers, Daughters Of The East!

By RUMAISA KHAN | INNLIVE

As honour killings in Pakistan are on the rise and rulings of religious bodies further disparage the status of women, the neighbouring is in dire need of a positive social change.

Can a mother as a normal human being kill her own teenage daughter on any pretext? Can she be so cruel and heartless as to burn any of her progeny to death?

SOCIAL ORPHANS, THE FATE OF NOMADIC CASTES IN AP

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

Ignored by the government, shunned by society and caught in a time-warp of their own, the nomadic castes and tribes of India are almost "non citizens" of the land. INN describes the abysmal plight of such people from Andhra Pradesh and highlights the injustice and neglect that they are subject to. 

Orphans are children who have no parents; who have nobody to care for them or love them. Sadly, our society too has many who may be called its orphans, whom we see around us but who remain ignored and neglected by everybody - the government, civil society organizations as well as media. These orphans of our society are the nomadic castes who are among the poorest and the most marginalized.

After 'Udta Punjab' Leak, Filmmakers Speak Out Against Piracy, Illegal Downloads

By RAMAN KAPOOR | INNLIVE

Even as the producers of Udta Punjab - Phantom Films and Balaji Motion Pictures - fought to stem the illegal download of their film, the entire footage of which was leaked online two days before its release, the film fraternity spoke out strongly on the issue of piracy.

6-Nations In Gulf Will 'Stop' Tainted Expatriates Entry

The 6-nations Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) will stop the entry of tainted expatriates from March 2015 onwards. In yet another move to cut reliance on foreign labor, the GCC is working on a joint database project that will contain comprehensive information about tainted foreign workers. 

The plan is aimed at preventing the entry of a foreign worker into any Gulf country, if proof is found of his criminal involvement in his previous country of residence.

International Day Against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking

By M H Ahssan

The global war against drug abuse and illicit trafficking has gained momentum over the years. To marshal worldwide support for the control over drugs, the 26th of June every year is devoted to the cause, known as the International Day against Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking. Undoubtedly, drugs can hold individuals to ransom, triggering a negative effect on an entire family and community. In effect, drugs can control life. The profound slogan, “Do drugs control your life? Your community? No place for drugs" encapsulates the resolve to fight drug abuse and illicit trafficking.

200 million people worldwide are slaves to drugs

• 162 million swear by cannabis -marihuana, hashish, THC.

• 35 million would do anything for ATS – ecstasy, methamphetamine, amphetamine, methcathinone.

• 16 million use opiates -opium, morphine, heroin, synthetic opiates

• 13 million use cocaine

How has the drug trade penetrated to such mammoth proportions?
Drugs have an effect on the mind and body. To support the demand for drugs, the nexus of farmers, global drug cartels and middlemen ‘sow the seeds’, leaving no stone unturned to perpetuate this nefarious trade. The drug racket needs to be busted, which is what the anti-drug campaigns are constantly striving to do – yet none other than society and individuals can help meet these objectives.

Bust the Racket
Three multilateral drug treaties form the edifice of international drug control and UNODC (UN Office on Drugs and Crime) initiatives. The efforts of UNODC strive to bring control on three key facets which is drug abuse, production and trafficking of illicit drugs. Illicit drugs are defined by the UNODC as drugs of the type - amphetamine-type stimulants (ATS), sedative hypnotics, opiates, cannabis, and hallucinogens.

UN General Assembly, in 1998 framed a defining statement conveying the extent of the global drug menace- it said, “Drugs destroy lives and communities, undermine sustainable human development and generate crime. Drugs affect all sectors of society in all countries; in particular, drug abuse affects the freedom and development of young people, the world’s most valuable asset."

Mean Business
A recent UN report has portrayed the alarming increase in the drug smuggling trade, especially heroin, which is smuggled into India from Pakistan. The consumption of cocaine in Western Europe is also steadily increasing. Asia is grappling with increasing levels of ATS use. Afghanistan, the highest producer of opium in the world, has become a hub for illicit drug trafficking.

Another worrying trend is the trafficking of pharmaceuticals into India from other South Asian countries. The International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) has blamed the gangs from West African countries for making India a transit point for movement of drug consignments to Europe.

Rajiv Walia, project coordinator in the Regional Office for South Asia of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) said, “Law enforcement agencies in the north-western parts of India are seizing ever increasing quantities of heroin originating in Afghanistan and coming via Pakistan en route to Europe. South Asia is being targeted for cocaine trafficking, with West African gangs bringing it here and exchanging it for heroin that they smuggle into Europe”.

Many illegally manufactured pharmaceutical preparations like buprenorphine, codeine-based syrups, benzodiazepines are illegally trafficked from India and smuggled into Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and Sri Lanka. From these countries, the illicit pharmaceutical medicines make their way to North America and Europe.

Courier companies are being used to smuggle illicit drugs. Recently, two parcels meant for Canada and South Africa containing more than 1kg of heroin were intercepted in India.

Internet Abets Drug Trafficking
The internet has been misused for providing information, advertisement and promotion of illegal drugs. The popularly needed drugs are Dextropropoxyphene, Nitrazepam, Diazepam, and Buprenorphine.

According to K.C. Verma, director of the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB), traffickers in Europe and Africa are in touch with several websites in India, known to offer pharmaceutical drugs with psychotropic substances. After the orders are registered by clients from other countries, the Indian organizations arrange to send the drugs by post with deceptive labels on the packets.

A report released by the International Narcotics Control Board, stated, “Internationally controlled pharmaceutical preparations manufactured locally in India are increasingly being diverted to some European countries and the US. Each year the US Customs and Border Protection intercepts in the mail system thousands of illegal parcels containing pharmaceutical preparations and marked ‘for personal use’. Most of those pharmaceutical preparations appear to have been sold illegally over the Internet.”

Indeed, it is time to crack the whip. The UN has pressed India to strengthen its control over illicit drug trafficking. It is also important to understand that it is not a problem specific to a country. It is a global problem which needs a global initiative. A concerted effort across nations is imperative to obliterate the scourge.

Special Report: 'New Born Babies For Sale In Gujarat'

By Aakar Patel / INN Bureau

A case of human trafficking against Dr Bharat Atit, a gynaecologist in Ahmedabad, has brought to light the seamy side of surrogacy and adoption in India. The Ahmedabad Crime Branch says Atit sold two babies to a childless couple from Porbandar, who were under his treatment, for Rs.8 lakh.

The crime branch police stumbled upon the case while investigating a rape complaint filed by Manjula Thakur, aka Mona, of Ahmedabad against a Rajkumar Yadhav last July. The police said Rajkumar was Manjula's boyfriend and that she filed a false complaint after they quarrelled over money she had received for selling her infant son.

Mumbai Rape: 'The Law Is An Ass, We Made An Idiot Of It'

By Dhiraj Nayyar (Guest Writer)

India is outraged at the horrific gangrape of a 22-year old woman in the heart of Mumbai. It should be. But why is it not equally outraged at the proceedings of a ‘fast-track’ court in Delhi that is trying four men for the equally horrific gangrape and murder of a 23-year old woman in the national capital nine months ago? If a fast-track court is unable to convict a notorious set of criminals in what is an open and shut case eight months after the trial started, can there be any doubt that in India “the law is an ass” and it is apparently taking the periodically-outraged citizens of this country for a ride?

No Crime Or No Violence Since 107 Years In This Village!

By Mithilesh Mishra | Raipur

For the last 107 years, Fuljhar- a village in Korba district of Chhattisgarh has never witnessed any fights or disputes that has required police intervention. Any feud or fight since 1907 has been sorted at the village chaupal.

Hence, villagers have not looked at the police station when they wanted to seek justice, they have straight away headed to the chaupal where they have got solutions to every problem.

Andhra Pradesh Tops In 'Crimes Against Women'

At a time when Andhra Pradesh, and Hyderabad in particular, is drawing hundreds of women software professionals from all over the country, the state has earned the dubious distinction for crimes against the fair sex.

The latest statistics of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) for 2012 reveals a telling tale of increasing crimes against women in the state, much more than any other part of the country. Of the 1,85,312 crimes against women in the entire country in 20012, 24,738 cases, or 13.3 percent, were reported from Andhra Pradesh. 

Even more disturbing is the statistics pertaining to Hyderabad and its outskirts. A comparison of crimes against women in 35 cities across the country shows that Hyderabad stands second, next only to Delhi. While 4,331 cases (17.5 per cent) were registered in Delhi, Hyderabad came second with 1,931 cases (7.8 per cent). Vijayawada topped in the number of eve-teasing cases by accounting for 11.3 per cent of the total cases in the country. 

“If the police is strict in dealing with the offenders, things would not have come to such a pass. One of the reasons why there are more crimes against women is that law enforcers do not deal with the offenders firmly,” says G Sucharitha, joint director, gender programming, Centre for World Solidarity. 

Interestingly, Andhra Pradesh, which has 7.2 per cent of the country’s population, has reported 13.3 per cent of cases of crimes against women while Uttar Pradesh, which has 16.6 per cent of the country’s population, reported 11.3 per cent or 20,993 cases. According to NCRB figures, crimes against women in general in the country have been increasing every year. In 2009, there were 1,40,601 cases, in 2010 1,54,333 cases, in 2011 1,55,553 cases and in 2012 there were 1,64,765 cases. 

Another disturbing trend is that the rate of crime has increased against women. While the overall, rate of crimes against women increased marginally from 14.7 per cent in 2011 to 16.3 per cent in 2012, for Andhra Pradesh in particular, it has been bad. 

The crime rate against women increased by 30.3 in Andhra Pradesh, which is almost that of Tripura at 30.7 per cent which is at the top. “Women in Andhra Pradesh feel unsafe because the government is also not sincere in ensuring their protection,” said women’s rights activist Noorjehan Siddiqui. 

What is also alarming is the number of torture cases in the state. Of the 75,930 cases registered in the country under section 498A IPC (dowry harassment), as many as 11,335 cases (14.9%) are from Andhra Pradesh. Only Tripura is slightly ahead with 15.7 per cent. 

“There are two reasons why such cases are more in AP. There is an insatiable desire for dowry here. Even people who go abroad demand dowry,” an IG in the CID said. 

That is not all. AP with 3,316 cases has the most number of sexual harassment cases in the country. This is 30.3 per cent of the total number of cases. Even in cases pertaining to the Indecent Representation of Women (Prohibition) Act, in Andhra Pradesh, the most number of cases have been registered. In all, 1005 cases were registered, which is 83.8 per cent of cases registered in the entire country.

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