Child Welfare Committee unhappy with police

Aizawl, Aug 23 (UNI) The Mizoram Child Welfare Committee (CWC) today stated that it was unhappy with the state police for allegedly refusing to register a case against six rapists.

''Police are not interested in filing a case against a rapist, unless the case is a recent one, on the grounds that they would not be able to get hard evidence,'' CWC member Vanramchhuangi told UNI here.

The CWC had recently filed an FIR with Bawngkawn police on behalf of a 15-year-old girl of Meidum village, who had allegedly been raped repeatedly since she was 11 years old.

However, the police refused to register a case despite the fact that the six rapists had been identified and their names mentioned in the FIR, Ms Vanramchhuanga alleged.

''At the request of her relatives, we had put her in a CWC home.

However, she has run away. To speak the truth, she was badly in need of male because she had been subjected to repeated rape,'' Ms Vanramchhuanga said.

Police claimed that the reason of high crime rate in Mizoram was because they lost the registered cases against almost all complaints in courts due to lack of evidence.

However, Ms Vanramchhuangi said the Supreme Court had recently ruled that if the victim had identified her rapist, that would be taken as enough evidence in court.

''The apex court ruling must be implemented in Mizoram,'' Ms Vanramchhuangi asserted.

Meanwhile, the Centre directed Mizoram to set up Children Commission, in a follow-up to the Commission for Protection of Child Rights Act passed by the Parliament in 2005.

Operational since September 2005, the CWC had dealt with 400 rape cases, of which 20 per cent were child rapes, CWC sources said.

UNI