CP takes lead to address crimes against children

Hyderabad, July 11 (Maxim News): Responding to an urgent need to tackle rising crimes against children, over 100 senior police officers of the Hyderabad City Police will participate in “Choke The Demand” training workshop focused on proactively addressing the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

The two-day workshop organized by “Change.org Changemantras and The News Minute” in coordination with the Hyderabad City Police and Bharosa Centre at the Plaza Hotel in Begumpet will be attended by ACPs, SHOs of the City and counsellors from Bharosa.

City Police Commissioner Anjani Kumar said, “Hyderabad City police will emerge as the leading police force to set the trend in addressing sexual violence against children. There is a high demand for children for online pornography or other forms of child sexual exploitation. We want our police force to be equipped with dealing with children, who are victims of such crimes in a sensitive manner, and also to be trained on cyber crime and the evolving trends that threaten children’s safety.”

Additional Commissioner of Police Shikha Goel said, “Crimes against children are 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. As part of its mandate to curb violence against children, the Hyderabad City police have decided to proactively address child trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation of children.”

The police officers will interact with researchers and experts on topics such as low conviction rates in POCSO and ITPA cases, arrests and prosecution of customers of commercial sexual exploitation of children, and cyber crime and its link with sexual exploitation of children. One of the main outcomes of the workshop was to initiate ‘Proactive Policing’ (both online and offline) to deter potential customers from seeking sex with a child in exchange of money.

The training sessions of “Choke The Demand” will deal with sessions on Sensitivity towards dealing with children, who are victims of such crimes, Cyber crime and the evolving trends that threaten children’s safety. Proactive policing by national experts on techniques and strategies that can be used to avoid such cases altogether was urgent.

The resource persons at the workshop are Roop Sen, Partner at Changemantras; Kaushik Gupta, advocate Kolkata High Court; Krithika Balu, Legal Researcher, Changemantras; Rajesh Chaturvedi, Investigation & Rescue Specialist, Rescue Foundation; Nitish Chandan, Cyber Security Expert, Cyber Peace Foundation; Bhanuja, Founder of NGO called REDS and a survivor of commercial sexual exploitation of children. Roop Sen, Partner at Changemantras said, “Proactive measures like this workshop ensure that we are all better prepared to deal with this problem, not only in terms of improving police capacity to handle such crimes but also in terms of optimal utilization of resources to combat the upward trends seen in crimes against children.”

Durga Nandini, Director Communications, Change.org said, “Telangana has been on the forefront of addressing the issue of commercial sexual exploitation of children. We would like to congratulate the Hyderabad police for taking the lead on hearing a fresh perspective from subject matter experts on how to address crimes against children.“ Resource persons at the Choke The Demand workshop also stressed on the need for a state level awareness and sensitization program, and the importance of warning citizens of the state of the strict legal provisions against sexual crimes against children, specifically against paying for sex with children. Amoli, a recently launched film on commercial sexual exploitation of children which went viral on social media, was screened during the workshop. (Maxim News)