Need for proactive policing to curb child sexual exploitation: CP Anjan Kumar

Secunderabad: Hyderabad City Police Commissioner Anjan Kumar said that to tackle increasing commercial sexual exploitation of children in the city, there was a need for proactive policing and be equipped with improvised techniques of investigation that drives the accused to conviction, here on Wednesday.

Addressing the training workshop organised by change.org, Change Mantras and The News Minute in collaboration with the Hyderabad City Police and Bharosa centre, he said, “There is a high demand for children for online pornography or other forms of child sexual exploitation. The most targeted are the children coming from rural areas of the poverty hit families. We want our police to be well equipped with dealing with children who are victims of such crimes in a sensitive manner and also to be trained on cybercrime and the evolving trends like social media and dark net that threaten children’s safety.”

Speaking on the same lines, Shikha Goel, Additional Commissioner of Hyderabad City police, said, “Crimes against children are an alarming trend which is on the rise across the country. Child abuse often translates into commercial sexual exploitation, with pornography being used to blackmail and groom children into being sexually exploited for commercial gain. In order to curb the child sexual menace, the Hyderabad City Police will proactively address child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children. 

At the same time counselling should be given to the victim and victim’s family. ” The workshop dealt with three sections of understanding that includes sensitivity towards dealing with children who are victims of such crimes, cybercrime and the evolving trends, proactive policing by national experts on techniques and strategies that can be used to avoid such cases altogether. Apart from that, the police officials interacted on low conviction rate, arrest and prosecution of such cases.

The workshop went on with the participation of speakers including Roop Sen, partner at Change Mantras, Kaushik Gupta, advocate Calcutta High court, Krithika Balu, legal researcher, Rajesh Chaturvedi, investigation and rescue specialist, Nitish Chandan, cyber crime expert, Bhanuja, founder of NGO called REDS and a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation of children.