News Analysis India

Tag: NCPCR

  • Check CCTVs around schools to check drug abuse by kids: NCPCR, NCB to police

    Express News Service
    NEW DELHI: Country’s apex child rights body and the Narcotics Control Bureau (NCB) have asked cops in every police station to carry out random checking of CCTV installed around schools and educational institutions to check drug and substance abuse by kids.

    In their joint action plan released on Tuesday, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and the NCB said that every police station should have a list of CCTV cameras installed in surrounding areas of the schools in their jurisdiction.

    It has also been recommended that chemists sell drugs under schedule H, H1, or X only by updating information in mobile app-based management information systems to ensure that underage kids do not get them without prescription and develop dependency.

    The two agencies have also suggested in their 80-page report that exclusive de-addiction and rehabilitation facilities be set up for children in 272 vulnerable districts by the ministry of social justice and empowerment.

    “However, if there are any constraints or lack of space, a separate portion in the existing facility has to be identified and partitioned for the children,” said the report adding that in the rest of the districts, it is necessary to make separate facilities for de-addiction and rehabilitation of children in all the district-level hospitals under existing norms.

    According to a study conducted by the NCPCR with the National Drug Dependence Treatment Centre, the common drugs used by children and adolescents were tobacco and alcohol, followed by inhalants and cannabis.

    The mean age of onset was the lowest for tobacco (12.3 years), followed by the onset of inhalants (12.4 years), cannabis (13.4 years), alcohol (13.6 years), proceeding to the use of harder substances (14.3–14.9 years), such as opium, pharmaceutical opioids and heroin, and substances through injecting route (15.1 years).

    A study conducted by the Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights on substance abuse by children on the other hand found that all children in conflict with the law were drug abusers.

    It was also seen that 95.5% of children in the child care institutions consumed drugs, and so did 93 % of the street children.

    Another study by the ASSOCHAM Ladies League on “Situational Analysis of Street Children in Metro Cities”, covering 2,000 children, revealed that children in metros were victims of one or other substance use, including inhalants (35%), alcohol (12%), cannabis (16%), chewing tobacco and gutkha (16%) and smoking (21 %), said the report.

    The five states in India with the highest number of children that need help for inhalant use problems are: Uttar Pradesh, 94,000; Madhya Pradesh, 50,000; Maharashtra,40,000; Delhi,38,000; and Haryana, 35,000; all other states together account for 2,01,000 inhalant users among children.

  • NCPCR team conducts probe into rape survivor’s death in Bhopal

    By Express News Service
    BHOPAL: A week after a 16-year-old alleged rape survivor died at a hospital in Bhopal due to “sleeping pills overdose”, a National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) team has started its probe into all aspects of the case.

    The five-member team comprising NCPCR registrar Anu Chaudhary, a psychiatry expert from AIIMS-Delhi, besides experts in legal affairs and POCSO Act were in Bhopal on Wednesday. They recorded statements of 14-15 stakeholders in the matter, including the members of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the MP government to probe the teenager’s death, the NCPCR head Priyank Kanoongo told TNIE.

    The team members during their visit to the MP capital met with officials of the state women and child development (WCD) department, members of the SIT of state police probing the case, doctors who conducted the autopsy of the girl’s body, the children shelter home staff, besides the family of the deceased girl and other survivor’s of the July 2020 rape case.

    The NCPCR had sent to the state government a detailed report about lacunas at 125-children shelter homes in MP around a year and a half ago. But the state government has responded to the report and the Commission’s recommendations with an Action Taken Report (ATR) only a few days back, just after the girl’s death.

    ALSO READ | Child rights body seeks report from Madhya Pradesh police in rape case involving newspaper owner

    “We had sent the MP government our detailed findings and recommendations pertaining to the 125 plus children homes, but the state government responded with ATR about just one children home (the Bhopal children home where the five rape survivor girls were housed since last six months) and that too only after the teenage girl’s death,” Kanoongo maintained.

    Importantly, the 16-year-old girl who died at the Hamidia Hospital in Bhopal on January 20 late night after battling for life for two days was among the five minor girls, who were sexually abused by an elderly newspaper owner Pyare Miyan. The rape case against Pyare Miyan was registered on the complaint of the five girls in July 2020 in Bhopal and the prime accused in the case was arrested from Srinagar (Kashmir) in July 2020 only. He is presently lodged in jail.

    ALSO READ | Urdu paper owner, who sexually exploited minor girls in MP, arrested in Srinagar

    Two of the five alleged rape survivor girls who were housed at the shelter home in Bhopal on the directions of Bhopal district’s child welfare committee (CWC) were admitted at the JP Hospital in Bhopal on January 18 reportedly after an overdose of sleeping pills.

    One of the two alleged survivors was subsequently referred to Hamidia Hospital in Bhopal after her condition worsened and was put on ventilator support. She died on January 20 late at night at Hamidia Hospital.

    On January 22, the CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan ordered an SIT probe into the matter. Directions have been issued to the SIT to complete the probe in 10 days.  But the opposition Congress has been demanding a CBI probe into the entire matter.

  • Contest HC ruling on groping: Child rights body to Uddhav government

    Express News Service
    NEW DELHI: The National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) has urged the Maharashtra government to appeal against a Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court order which ruled that mere groping is not sexual assault and dropped charges under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) act in a case.The order has attracted widespread criticism.

    The Commission, in its letter to the state chief secretary Sanjay Kumar, said on Monday that prosecution has failed to represent  the case of the minor victim properly.

    “If the prosecution had made the submissions as per the spirit of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, the accused would have been acquitted from the serious offence against the minor,” said  the letter.

    It added that the remark that “skin to skin with sexual intention without penetration” also needs to be reviewed and the state should take note of this as it seems to be derogatory to the minor victim”.

    The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court, last week, in a case had said that groping a minor’s breast without “skin to skin contact” cannot be termed as “sexual assault” under section 7 of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act while clarifying that it will still constitute an offence under section 354 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) which pertains to outraging the modesty of a woman.