Human trafficking continues to rise with police occupied with insu

Guwahati, Oct 26 (UNI) Women from Asom continue to be illegally trafficked to all parts of the country due to poverty and unemployment.

On an average 250, female adults and 200 minor girls go missing from Asom annually.

The all-India figure is as high as 22,480 women and 44,476 children.

More alarmingly, almost half of them continue to be untraceable in Asom. The country-figure of untraced women and children stood at 5,452 and 11,008 respectively.

As the security forces are more occupied with law and order problems, specifically anti-insurgency operations in Asom, combating human trafficking has taken a back seat.

About 40 per cent police officials in the country are not aware of the issue of trafficking and a meager 6.6 per cent have undergone any sort of trafficking sensitisation training.

These startling statistics were presented yesterday at a seminar by the National Media Consultation on Human trafficking, HIV/AIDS and Drug Trafficking here by IGP (CID) Gunottam Bhuyan. He is also the nodal officer of the anti-trafficking section in the state.

A vast majority of the missing women and from the state are sexually exploited, A UN report stated that 18,000 - 20,000 women and girls were introduced in the flesh trade in the country annually.

Mr Bhuyan 268 female adults and 319 minors were registered to be missing best year. The figures of those traced were yet to be compiled, he added.

Trends in the previous year of success rate of locating missing women are not very encouraging.

Of the 347 women and 349 girls who went missing in 2004, 269 women and 231 girls remained untraced, Mr Bhuyan informed.

In the figures the IGP presented, the ratio between traced and untraced women and girls since 1996 to 2005 continued to decrease and since 2002, the number of untraced victims far exceeded those who were rescued.

He informed that 65 girls had been rescued so far from outbound trains in the state this year against zero success in the previous years.

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