Photo Courtesy: nenow
Guwahati: Jorhat police pulled an eight-year-old girl from Dergaon on Wednesday, September 2. Kidnappers snatched the child from Mariani on the evening of September 1. A team from the Child Development and Special Police, alongside the Mariani station officer, handled the rescue. The girl is now home with her parents.
This rescue followed a major operation the day before. Mariani police found three other children, aged six, seven, and nine, on August 31. Those children vanished on August 30. The Government Railway Police and the Railway Protection Force tracked the trio to Tinsukia. They returned the children to their guardians.
These back-to-back incidents reveal growing dangers. Official numbers confirm a troubling trend. Crime data shows cases against children in Assam hit 10,174 in 2023. That is a 149 percent jump from the 4,084 cases recorded in 2022. Between 2014 and 2023, reported offenses climbed by roughly 634 percent.
National statistics paint a grim picture. Kidnapping and abduction accounted for 45 percent of all reported crimes against children across India in 2023. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act made up another 38.2 percent of cases. Authorities tracked 79,884 kidnapping cases nationwide last year. Of those, "14,637 cases involved minor girls who were allegedly abducted with the intention of forcing them into marriage." The numbers confirm why officials remain worried.
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