Guwahati : Police stations in Assam will soon have personnel with better knowledge of handling witch hunting, human trafficking and child labour cases.
The state police have trained up 145 sub-inspectors and havildars specifically to deal with the such crimes.
These officials will soon be deployed in the police stations across the state, particularly in those areas where such cases are on rise.
“The police personnel have been trained up at the police training college at Dergaon in Golaghat district as part of their pre-promotion orientation. This is for the first time that police personnel in our state are being trained up on such crimes,” sources in the Assam Police said Monday.
People being branded as witches for allegedly practicing black magic, attacked and killed has become a serious issue in the Assam in past several years.
According to government statistics, over 140 people have already been killed in such attacks since 2002 while 85 cases of witch hunting have been registered since 2008 till March this year.
Twelve districts in Assam out of total 27 have registered increase in witch hunting cases.
Although about 500 people have been arrested in these cases, the investigation into many cases is long pending due to shortage of police officers with detailed knowledge of these issues.
The failure of the state police to deal with such issues has drawn criticism from the Gauhati High Court which recently slammed the government for the delay in framing a law to deal with the witch hunting cases.
Also, over 280 cases of trafficking of women and children have been reported in Assam from 2011 to Feb 2014. The success rate in investigation of trafficking cases is also poor.
“Women and children are taken out with the promise of good jobs or education but fall victim to traffickers and have been rescued from brothels in Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore and other cities. Minors have been rescued from hazardous factories in metros,” police said.