Kidnapped or not—that is the question facing Mumbai. The city police recorded a jaw-dropping total of 875 minor girls kidnapped in only eight months of this year, from January to August. That makes it nearly four cases every day. In 846 cases, the kidnappings were detected, and the girls were found. The corresponding period for last year showed a higher number of kidnappings, at 941, of which 879 were detected. In the news of the archetypal big bad city, the kidnapping of minor girls tends to recede from headlines, and serious sexual crimes and gender violence get all the attention. However, the kidnapping of minors—girls and boys—demands a closer look for several reasons.
Links Between Kidnapping And Sexual Crimes
First, kidnapping, molestation and sexual harassment are the first-level crimes that, when unpunished, set the stage for heinous rapes and sexual assaults. Most kidnapping and harassment cases reaffirm the proven assertion by women’s groups and gender rights organisations that these are often committed by people known to the victims and the perpetrators can be easily traced. Kidnapping of minors, especially girls, is closely interwoven with the sex trafficking network that has its tentacles across international borders. This aspect should strike alarm bells across society and in the police force. But this is not all in the Mumbai story.
High Detection Rates Raise Questions
Second, the unusually high detection rate year after year points in other directions. As social activists have pointed out, the registered cases of kidnapping are often a cover for young girls leaving home—some voluntarily and others by persuasion—due to domestic abuse, family problems or discrimination that they desire to escape. Many elope with their boyfriends or fiancés, especially when the two belong to different castes or religions and do not have parental approval.
The registration of kidnapping cases, in such situations, muddles the crime record of the city and, unfortunately, makes kidnapping appear a regular crime. While genuine kidnapping cases must be investigated and prosecuted in ways that make Mumbai safer for women and girls, especially minor girls, cases where the kidnapping charge masks actions by girls to deal with social or family situations call for a different approach altogether that blends the toughness of criminal jurisprudence with the sensitivity of social situations. The silver lining is that the total number of kidnapping cases was a tad lower this year than last year, but there is no certain way to know if the reduction was in genuine kidnapping cases or masked ones.
Social And Familial Counselling
Lastly, this piquant situation points to the unwieldy or inconvenient socio-legal intersection between the minor individual and her family, between her independence and rigid social norms, between her family and the larger community, and so on. If a majority of kidnapping cases turn out to be a cover for something else, it calls more for social and familial counselling than police intervention.
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